


.^'\ 



^^^ 










o, *'7;T* A 







o, *' ,.T* A 




• ' ^ A^ <Pv * o « ' ^•i 





^"-^^^ . 



v>^^^<^. -.' 













^AO^ 






o s • • * %.* 




.^^°- ' 














M' 



^>^ 









The White Heart 
of Mojave 






tm 




^n < 



THE WHITE HEART 
OF MOJAVE 

An Adventure with the Outdoors 
OF THE Desert 



EDNA BRUSH PERKINS 



BONI AND LIVERIGHT 

Publishers New York 






Copyright, 1922, by 

BONI AND LiVERIGHT, InC. 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



HPViS'?2 



©CUG86877 



To 

my friend 

CHARLOTTE HANNAHS JORDAN 

who shared this adventure 

in the wind and sun 

of big spaces 



CONTENTS 



Chapter 




Page 


I. 


The Feel of the Outdoors . 


9 


II. 


How We Found Mojave . 


20 


III. 


The White Heart . . . 


' 51 


IV. 


The Outfit 


71 


V. 


Entering Death Valley . 


87 


VI. 


The Strangest Farm in the 






World 


112 


VII. 


The Burning Sands . . . 


128 


VIII. 


The Dry Camp .... 


. 141 


IX. 


The Mountain Spring . . 


155 


X. 


The High White Peaks . 


180 


XI. 


Snowstorm and Sandstorm 


195 


XII. 


The End of the Adventure 


219 




Appendix 


225 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

A Desert Road Frontispiece 

Facing Pagb 

Some Half-wild Burrows Around Silver Lake 54 

Beatty, at the Base of a Big Red Mountain . 80 

The Outfit 90 

The Camp Behind the Barn 102 

The Alkali Bottom of Death Valley . . . 130 

The Desert 150 

A Pack-Train Crossing a Dry Lake . . . 166 



The Feel of the Outdoors 

BEYOND the walls and solid roofs of 
houses is the outdoors. It is always on 
the doorstep. The sky, serene, or piled 
with white, slow-moving clouds, or full of wind 
and purple storm, is always overhead. But 
walls have an engrossing quality. If there are 
many of them they assert themselves and domi- 
neer. They insist on the unique importance of 
the contents of walls and would have you be- 
lieve that the spaces above them, the slow pro- 
cession of the seasons and the alternations of 
sunshine and rain, are accessories, pleasant or 
unpleasant, of walls, — indeed that they were 
made, and a bungling job, too, and to be disre- 
garded as a bungling job should be, solely that 
walls might exist. 

Perhaps your lawyer or your dentist has his 

[9] 



White Heart of Mojave 



office on the nineteenth floor of a modern sky- 
scraper. While you wait for his ministrations 
you look out of his big window. Below you the 
roofs of the city spread for miles to blue hills or 
the bright sea. The smoke of tall chimneys 
rolls into the sky that fills all the space between 
you and the horizon and the sun; the smoke of 
hustling prosperity fans out, and floats, and 
mixes with the clouds, and becomes at last part 
of a majestic movement of something other than 
either smoke or clouds. Suddenly the roofs that 
covered only tables and chairs and power ma- 
chines cover romance, a million romances rise 
and mingle like the smoke of the tall chimneys. 
They mix with the romance of the clouds and 
the hills. You are happy. Nothing is changed 
around you, but you are happy. You only know 
that the sun did it, and those f ar-oflf hills. When 
the man you are waiting for comes in you con- 
gratulate him on his fine view. Then the jealous 
walls assert themselves again; they want you to 
forget as soon as possible. 

But you never quite forget. You visit the 
woods or the mountains or the sea in your vaca- 

[lO] 



The Feel of the Outdoors 



tion. You loaf along trout streams, or in red 
autumn woods with a gun in your hands for an 
excuse, or chase golf balls over green hills, or 
sail on the bay and get becalmed and do not 
care. For the pleasure of living outdoors you 
are willing to have your eyes smart from the 
smoke of the camp fire, and to be wet and cold, 
and to fight mosquitoes and flies. You like the 
feel of it, and you wait for that sudden sense of 
romance everywhere which is the touch of some- 
thing big and simple and beautiful. It is 
always beyond the walls, that something, but 
most of us have been bullied by them so much 
that we have to go far away to find it; then we 
can bring it home and remember. 

Charlotte and I knew the outdoors a little. 
Though we were middle-aged, mothers of fami- 
lies and deeply involved in the historic struggle 
for the vote, we sometimes looked at the sky. In 
our remote youth we had had a few brief experi- 
ences of the mountains and the woods; I had 
some not altogether contemptible peaks to my 
credit and she had canoed in the Canadian wilds, 
so when we decided that a vacation was due us 



White Heart of Mojave 



we chose the outdoors. Our labors had been 
arduous, divided as they were between the 
clamorings of the young and our militant mis- 
sion to free the world; we were thoroughly 
habituated to walls and set a high value on their 
contents. It was our habit to tell large and 
assorted audiences that freedom consists in cast- 
ing a ballot at regular intervals and taking your 
rightful place in a great democracy; nor did it 
seem anomalous, as perhaps it should have, that 
our chiefest desire was to escape from every 
manifestation of democracy in the solitariness 
of some wild and lonely place far from city halls, 
smokestacks, national organizations, and streets 
of little houses all alike. For some time the 
desire had been cutting through our work with 
an edge of restlessness. We called it "Need for 
a Vacation," not knowing that every desire to 
withdraw from the crowd is a personal assertion 
and a protest against the struggle and worry, the 
bluff and banality and everlasting tail-chasing 
which goes on inside the walls of the stateliest 
statehouse and the two-room suite with bath. Our 
real craving was not for a play hour, but for the 

[12] 



•\ 



The Feel of the Outdoors 



wild and lonely place and a different kind of 
freedom from that about which we had been 
preaching. 

Our choice of the wild and lonely place was 
circumscribed by the fact that we had been 
offered the use of an automobile from Los 
Angeles. The automobile was a much appre- 
ciated gift, but we regretted that Los Angeles 
had to be the starting point because southern 
California is the blissful goal of the tired east 
and the tired east was what we needed to escape 
from. We left home without plans — too many 
plans in vacation are millstones hung around 
your neck — sure only that such places as Santa 
Barbara, Redlands, Riverside, and San Diego 
would be for us nothing more than points on the 
way to somewhere else. An atlas showed a 
great empty space just east of the Sierra Nevada 
Range and the San Bernadino Mountains 
vaguely designated as the Mojave Desert. It 
was surprising to find the greater part of south- 
ern California, the much-advertised home of 
the biggest fruit and flowers in the world, in- 
cluded in it. A few criss-cross lines indicated 

[13] 



White Heart of Mojave 



mountains; north of the Santa Fe Railroad, 
which crosses the Mojave on the way to the 
coast, the words Death Valley were printed be- 
tween two groups of them; in the south a big 
white space similarly surrounded was the Impe- 
rial Valley; the names of a few towns sprangled 
out from the railroad — nothing else. Was the 
desert just a white space like that? The word 
had a mixed connotation, it suggested monotony, 
sterility, death — and also big open spaces, gold 
and blue sunsets, and fascination. We recol- 
lected that some author had written about the 
"terrible fascination" of the desert. The white 
blank on the map looked very wild and lonely. 
We went to Los Angeles on the Santa Fe in 
order to see what it might contain. 

We looked at it. After leaving the high pla- 
teau of northern Arizona the railroad crosses the 
Colorado River and enters the lowlands of the 
Mojave Desert. That is the first glimpse the 
tourist has of California, but he hardly realizes 
that it is California, for it is so different from the 
pictures on the time-tables and hotel folders. 
At Needles he usually pulls down the window 

[14] 



The Feel of the Outdoors 



shades against the too-hot sun and forgets the 
dust and heat in the pages of the last best seller, 
or else he goes out on the California Limited 
which spares its passengers the dusty horrors of 
the desert by crossing the Mojave at night. His 
California, and ours when we left Chicago, con- 
sists of the charming bungalows with date palms 
in their dooryards and yellow roses climbing 
their porches, the square orange groves all 
brushed and combed for dress parade, the pic- 
turesque missions, and the white towns with 
streets shaded by feathery pepper trees west of 
the backbone of the Sierras, not the hundreds of 
miles of desolation east of them. Hour after 
hour we pounded through it in a hot monotony 
of yellow dust. Hour after hour great sweeps 
of blue-green brush led off to mountains blue 
and red against the sky. We passed black lava 
beds, and strange shining flats of baked clay, and 
clifflike rocks. It was very vast. The railroad 
seemed a tiny thread of life through an endless 
solitude. The train stopped at forlorn stations 
consisting of a few buildings stark on the coarse, 
gravelly sand. Sometimes a gang of swarthy 

[IS] 



White Heart of Mojave 



Mexicans stopped work on the track to watch 
us go by, sometimes a house stood alone in the 
brush, sometimes a lonely automobile crawled 
along the highway beside the railroad. It was 
empty and vast, and over it all the sun poured 
a white flood. 

In spite of the dust and glare a fascinated curi- 
osity kept us looking out of the dirty windows 
all day. Occasionally dim wagon tracks led 
toward the mountains, some of which were high 
and set on wide, solid foundations. They were 
immovable, old, old mountains. Shadows cut 
sharply into the smooth brightness of their sides. 
Their colors changed and the sand ran between 
them like beckoning roads. "Come," it seemed 
to say, "and find what is hidden here." Once 
we saw a man with three burros loaded with 
cooking utensils and bedding. He was traveling 
across country through the sagebrush. Where 
could he be going? 

Unconsciously I asked the question aloud and 
Charlotte answered: 

"He is a prospector looking for a gold mine. 
Don't you see his pick on the second mule?" 

[.6] 



The Feel of the Outdoors 



"Please say burro," I pleaded. "It gives a 
better atmosphere. Besides it is not a mule, it's 
an ass." 

"Those are the Old Dad Mountains over 
there, those big rosy ones. That's vv^here he is 
going, up the long path of sand. He will camp 
there. Perhaps he is not a prospector, he may 
have a mine already." 

"Of course he has one," I assented. "All the 
prospectors are dead. They died of thirst in 
Death Valley." 

"My prospector did not. He is going to his 
mine. He tries to w^ork it himself but it does 
not pay very well because he can't get enough 
out, and he can't sell it because too many booms 
have failed, and nobody will invest. So he goes 
up and down in the sun and has a good time." 

Perhaps you could have a good time going up 
and down in the sun through those empty spaces 
that stretched so endlessly on either side of the 
track. I wondered if we might not go to the 
Imperial Valley and see that strange thing, the 
new Salton Sea, a lake in the desert; but Char- 
lotte objected because that part of the white 

[17] 



White Heart of Mojave 



blank was partially under irrigation, too near 
the coast, and would be too civilized and full of 
ranches. I doubted much if the tired east went 
there for I thought that it was the desert like 
this, only hotter, worse. She declared that the 
tired east went everywhere that it could get to. 
Evidently it could not reach Mojave, for cer- 
tainly it was not rushing around in automobiles 
trying to be happy, nor pouring the savings for 
its short holiday into the money bags of con- 
scienceless hotel companies. Mojave was indeed 
a blank, a wild and lonely place. 

"I think," Charlotte remarked after a time, 
"that we will go to Death Valley." 

'Why?" 

"Because I am tired of looking at the Twenty 
Mule Team Borax boxes and wondering what 
kind of place they came from that could have a 
name like that." 

I thought it was not a sufficient reason for me 
to risk my life. 

"I think," she said, "that it is the wildest and 
loneliest place of all. Nobody goes there except 
your prospectors, and you say they are all dead. 

[i8] 



The Feel of the Outdoors 



Think of the gold and jewels they did not find 
lying around everywhere. Think of the hot- 
ness and brightness. It must be an awful, lone- 
some, sparkling place." 

It must be! Those reasons appealed to me, 
but the idea was a bit upsetting considering that 
we had started for a happy-go-lucky vacation, a 
little like playing with a kitten and having it 
turn into a tiger. Mojave was like a tiger, terri- 
ble and fascinating. From the windows of the 
Santa Fe train it was a savage, ruthless-looking 
country, naked in the sun. It repelled us and 
held us, we could not keep our eyes off it. They 
ached from straining to pierce the distances 
where the beckoning roads were lost in bright- 
ness. Mountains and valleys full of outdoors, 
nothing but outdoors! What was the feel of 
being alone in the sagebrush? How free the 
sweep of the wind must be, how hot the sun, how 
immense the deep night sky! 

Thus the wild and lonely place was selected. 
A strange outdoors for a holiday truly, and we 
had an adventure with it. 



[■9] 



II 

How We Found Mojave 

WHEN the automobile was delivered 
into our hands at Los Angeles we 
wanted to turn around immediately 
and drive back through the Cajon Pass into the 
Mojave Desert, but our inquiries about direc- 
tions met with discouragement on every side. It 
seemed to be unheard of for two women to 
attempt such a thing; the distances between the 
towns where we could get accommodations were 
too great and the roads were apt to have long 
stretches of sand where we would get stuck. 
Our friends drew a dismal picture of us sitting 
out in the sagebrush beside a disabled car and 
slowly starving to death. 

"You could not fix it," they said, "and what 
would you do?" 

We suggested that we might wait until some- 
body came along. 

[20] 



How We Found Mojave 



They assured us that nobody ever came along. 

We went to the Automobile Club; they re- 
ceived us with enthusiasm and told us about all 
the places California is proud of and how to 
get to them, but California seems not to be proud 
of the desert, for when we mentioned it our 
advisers became gloomy. They seemed to have 
no very definite information and were sure we 
would not like it. In the face of so much dis- 
couragement we hardly dared to ask about Death 
Valley and when we did, hesitatingly, the ques- 
tion was ignored. We simply could not get 
there, nobody ever went. The Imperial Valley 
seemed to be almost as bad. One of the maps 
they gave us showed a main highway from San 
Diego over into it, but they said that it was only 
a gravel road, mountainous and steep, and that 
we had better stick to the main routes. Evidently 
they had no faith in our skill as drivers, nor 
belief in our purpose, so we soon gathered up 
the maps and innumerable folders about resort 
hotels, thanked them, and went our way. 

The collection contained no map of the Mo- 
jave. She had called us, but not loudly enough 

[21] 



White Heart of Mojave 



as yet, and now that we no longer saw her we 
remembered her terribleness more than her fas- 
cination. We would content ourselves with the 
Imperial Valley, at least for a beginning; but 
we said nothing more about it and started down 
the coast with every appearance of having a 
ladylike programme. In our then mood we hated 
the coast and were guilty of speeding along the 
fine macadam between Los Angeles and San 
Diego in our eagerness to leave it. We turned 
due east from the green little city on the shores 
of its beautiful harbor and headed for the desert. 
Our unsatisfactory interview at the Automobile 
Club had led us to believe that the Imperial 
Valley, irrigated or not, was a wild and lonely 
place, the desert itself, for it seemed to be sur- 
rounded by difficulties. 

The road from San Diego proved to be good, 
presenting no hindrances not easily surmounted, 
and as we drove along it we told each other what 
we thought about the Automobile Club. Grad- 
ually the character of the country changed. A 
little of the prickly, spiky desert vegetation with 
which we were to become so familiar appeared. 

[22] 



How We Found Mojave 



The round hills gave way to piles of bare, col- 
ored rock, the soil became a gravelly sand on 
which scrub oak and manzanita grew. The 
houses became fewer. In one place we had to 
detour and found deep, soft sand, nothing to 
the sand of a real desert road, but we did not 
know that then. The change was subtle, yet we 
felt it. The country took on the harshness that 
had repelled us from the train-windows. Being 
alone in it was at first a little dreadful. 

After a day or so of leisurely driving we came 
suddenly to the edge of the valley. The ground 
fell before us, cut into rough canyons and foot- 
hills, two thousand feet to a blue depth. It was 
like a great hole full of blue mist, surrounded 
by red and chocolate-colored mountains. Noth- 
ing was clear down there though the mountains 
were sharply defined and had indigo shadows on 
them. The valley was a pure, light blue, of the 
quality of the sky, as though the sky reached 
down into it. We lingered a long time eating 
our lunch on a jagged rock, trying to pierce the 
blue veils and see the Salton Sea, a big salt lake 
which we knew was there with the tracks of the 

[33] 



White Heart of Mojave 



Southern Pacific beside it, the sand dunes we had 
heard of, and the town of El Centro where we 
were to spend the night. We could see nothing 
of them, only a phantasy of changing color, an 
unreality. 

We found the whole desert full of drama, but 
the Imperial Valley is perhaps the most dra- 
matic spot of all, except Death Valley, that 
other deep hole below sea-level which is so much 
more remote and so utterly lonely. The great 
basin of the Imperial Valley was once a part of 
the ocean until the gradual silting up of its 
narrow opening separated it from the Gulf of 
California. The bottom of the valley then be- 
came an inland sea which slowly evaporated 
under the hot sun, leaving as it receded a thick 
deposit of salt on the sand. At last the valley 
was dry, a deep glistening bowl between choco- 
late-colored mountains, a white desolation un- 
disturbed by man or beast, covered with silence. 
For ages it lay thus while morning and evening 
painted the hills. 

Then the railroad came with its thread of 
life, connecting Yuma with San Bernadino and 

[24] 



How We Found Mojave 



Los Angeles. Soon a salt-works was built in 
what had once been the bottom of the ocean, and 
later an irrigation-system for the southern end 
of the valley from the Colorado River which 
flows just east of the Chocolate Mountains. The 
white desolation was made to bloom and, in 
spite of the intense heat of summer, has become 
one of the richest farming districts of California. 
But the drama is still going on. A few years ago 
the untamed Colorado River that had fought 
its way through the Grand Canyon and come 
two hundred miles across the desert turned wild 
and flooded into the Imperial Valley. It was 
shut out again, but it left the new Salton Sea in 
the old ocean bed. Its yellow waves now break 
near the irrigated area; it drowned the salt 
works. The Salton Sea is slowly vanishing as 
its predecessor did; in a little while the valley 
will again be dry and white and glistening. 

The road descended before us in jigjags to 
the blue depth. It was a good road but narrow 
in places, dropping sheer at the edge, and steep. 
Very carefully we drove down, emerging at last 
through a narrow, rough canyon onto the sandy 

[25] 



White Heart of Mojave 



floor of the valley. A macadam road led like a 
shining band through the sagebrush. This evi- 
dence of civilization was strange in the sur- 
rounding wilderness, for as yet we could see no 
sign of life in the valley. The sand came up to 
the edge of the road and was blown into dunes 
between us and the new sea. There was nothing 
but sunshine and sagebrush and flowers. The 
flowers amazed us, for why should they grow 
there? There was a yellow kind that outshone 
our perennial garden coreopsis, and numberless 
little flowers pressed close to the sand with 
spread-out velvet, or shining, or crinkled blue 
or frosted leaves. We had to get out of the car 
to see them, and whenever we got out we felt 
the heat blaze around us. We were below sea- 
level and even in February it was very hot. The 
light was almost blinding, and a silver heat- 
shimmer swam between us and the mountain- 
walls. The mountains seemed to be of many 
colors which changed as the afternoon advanced. 
The sun set in a more vivid purple and gold than 
we had ever seen. 

We lingered so long looking at the strange 

[26] 



How We Found Mojave 



plants and flowers that twilight found us still 
alone with the desert. Only the white macadam 
band promised any end to it. Realizing that 
night was coming and we had an unknown num- 
ber of miles before us we stepped on the accel- 
erator with more energy than wisdom. The re- 
sult was a loud explosion of one of the brand- 
new rear tires. We found the tire so hot that 
we had to wait for it to cool before we could 
change it, and the road hot to touch though the 
sun had been down for some time. We called 
ourselves all manner of names for being such 
fools as to try to drive fast on that sizzling sur- 
face. It was the first practical lesson about 
getting along on the desert. 

Soon after that we came to an irrigation-ditch. 
Instantly everything was changed and we were 
in a farming country. El Centro is a hustling 
town with a modern four-story hotel. We 
wished it were not four stories when we learned 
that part of it had recently been shaken down by 
an earthquake, and especially when we experi- 
enced three small shocks during that night. The 
earthquakes themselves did not seem surprising, 

[27] 



White Heart of Mojave 



they were a fitting part of the weird experiences 
of the day. We felt as though we had been 
very near to the elemental forces of nature; we 
had been with the bare earth and volcanic rocks 
and strange plants that flourish in dryness, and 
felt the unmitigated beat of the sun. It was 
like seeing the great drama of nature unveiled, 
fierce and beautiful. 

We stayed several days in the Imperial Val- 
ley, visiting the Salton Sea, figuring out the 
beach lines of that other more ancient sea, and 
walking among the sand dunes. We found that 
we always went away from the farms into the 
desert. She was calling us loudly enough now. 
We heard her and were determined to find more 
of her. When we tried to go on, however, we 
met with the same universal discouragement. In 
El Centro they said that the road out through 
Yuma to the desert east of the Chocolate Moun- 
tains was very bad, and the road up the Valley 
through Palm Springs and Banning no road at 
all. Besides, there was no water anywhere. 
Later we found out that none of these things 
were exactly true, but it probably seemed the 

[28] 



How We Found Mojave 



best advice to give two lone w^omen w^ith no 
experience of desert roads. Our appearance 
must have been against us. Certainly it w^as no 
lack of persistence, for we interviewed every- 
body, hotel-managers, ranchers, druggists and 
garage-men. They all looked us over and gave 
the same advice. As far as we could learn, the 
Mojave Desert which we tried to go to in the 
first place was where we should be. We sus- 
pect now that they wanted to get rid of us. 

We returned to Los Angeles and attacked the 
Automobile Club again. As before we had to 
listen to arguments about the roads and the sand 
and the distances and the accommodations, but 
this time we listened unmoved. With a defiant 
feeling very reminiscent of youth we purchased 
a shovel and two big canteens to fasten on the 
running-board because we had observed that all 
the cars in the Imperial Valley were thus 
equipped. These implements gave us a feeling 
of preparedness. We also bought some blankets 
and food lest we should break down on a lonely 
road. We knew what we wanted now and the 
Automobile Club found a map. It was an in- 

[29] 



White Heart of Mojave 



spiring map covered with a network of black 
roads and many towns in bold type. We studied 
it and found that we could never get more than 
thirty miles from somewhere, and we thought 
we could walk that if we had to. For some 
reason no one told us to beware of abandoned 
towns and abandoned roads, perhaps they did 
not know about them. One of the black lines 
led straight toward Death Valley. Once more 
we said nothing about our destination, and 
started. 

A good road led through the Cajon Pass to 
Victorville and thence over sand dotted with 
groves of Joshua palms to Barstow. A Joshua 
palm is a grotesque tree-yucca which appears 
wherever the mesas of the Mojave rise to an ele- 
vation of a few thousand feet. It becomes twenty 
feet high in some places and its ungainly arms 
stick up into the sky. It has long, dark green, 
pointed leaves ending in sharp thorns like the 
yucca. It attains to great age and the dead 
branches, split ofif from the trunk or lying on 
the ground, look as though they were cov- 
ered with matted gray hair. Charlotte and I 

[30] 



How We Found Mojave 



never liked them much, they seemed like mon- 
sters masquerading as trees; but in that first 
encounter, when we drove through them mile 
after mile in a desolation broken only by the 
narrow ribbon of the gravel road, they were 
distinctly unpleasant and we were glad when 
we left them behind at Barstow. 

There seemed to be a choice of routes from 
that town so we had an ice cream soda and inter- 
viewed the druggist, having discovered that 
druggists are among the most helpful of citizens. 
He proved to be an enthusiast about the desert, 
the first we had met, and we warmed to him. He 
brought out an album full of kodak-pictures of 
the Devil's Playground where the sand-dunes 
roll along before the wind. He grew almost 
poetic about them, but when we spread out the 
map and showed him the proposed route to 
Death Valley he grew grave. He said the road 
was so seldom traveled that in places it was 
obliterated. We would surely get lost. Silver 
Lake, the next town on it, was eighty-seven miles 
away. There was one ranch on the road but he 
was not sure any one was living there. He was 

[3il 



White Heart of Mojave 



not even sure we could get accommodations at 
Silver Lake. Yes, it w^as a v^onderful country; 
you went over five mountain ridges. He forgot 
himself and began to describe it glowingly when 
a tall man who was looking at the magazines 
interposed with: ^'Surely, you would not send 
the ladies that way!" 

The two words "get lost" were what deterred 
us. We felt we could cope with most calamities, 
but already, coming through the Joshua palms, 
we had sensed the size and emptiness of Mojave. 
At least until we were a little better acquainted 
with the strange land where even the plants 
seemed weird, we needed the reassurance of a 
very definite ribbon of road ahead. We decided 
to go to Randsburg, then to Ballarat and try to 
get into Death Valley from there. The drug- 
gist doubted if we could get into the valley at 
all. We began to suspect that it might be diffi- 
cult. 

Randsburg, Atolia and Johannesburg are 
mining towns close together about forty miles 
north of Barstow. The road there was no such 
highway as we had been traveling upon; often 

[32] 



How We Found Mojave 



it was only two ruts among the sagebrush, but 
it was well enough marked to follow easily. 
Great sloping mesas spread for miles on either 
side of the track, rising to rocky crowns. All 
the big, open, gradually ascending sweeps are 
called mesas on the Mojave, though they are in 
no sense table-lands like the true mesas of New 
Mexico and Arizona. The groves of Joshua 
palms had disappeared; we were lower down 
now where only greasewood and sagebrush grew. 
The unscientific like us, who accept the word 
*'mesa," lump together all the varieties of low 
prickly brush as sagebrush. The little bushes 
grew several feet apart on the white, gravelly 
ground, each little bush by itself. They 
smoothed out in the distance like a carpet woven 
of all shades of blue and green. The occasional 
greasewood, a graceful shrub covered with small 
dark green leaves, waved in the wind. Unob- 
structed by trees the mesa seemed endless. We 
stopped the car to feel the silence that enveloped 
it. The place was vast and empty as the 
stretches we had seen from the railroad, and 
now we found how still they all had been. The 

[33] 



White Heart of Mojave 



strong, fresh wind pressed steadily against us 
like a wind at sea. 

Atolia was the first town, golden in the setting 
J5un, on the shoulder of a stern, red mountain. 
Before it a wide valley fell away in whose bot- 
tom gleamed the white floor of a dry lake. All 
the mountain tops were on fire. The three towns 
were very close together, separated by the shoul- 
der of the red mountain. Randsburg was the 
largest, whose one street was a steep hill. It 
had a score of buildings and two or three stores. 
Johannesburg, just over the crest, had six build- 
ings, among them an adobe hotel and a large 
garage. All three towns ornamented the map 
with big black letters. We thought we were 
approaching cities and found instead little 
wooden houses set on the sand with the great 
simplicity of the desert at their doors. 

According to that map Death Valley was now 
not more than sixty miles away. We thoroughly 
startled the inhabitants of Johannesburg, famil- 
iarly known as Joburg, by the announcement 
that we were going there. We did not yet know 
how startling an announcement it was; but these 

C34] 



How We Found Mojave 



real dwellers on the desert, intimately acquainted 
with her difficulties, met our ignorance in a 
more helpful spirit than any of our other ad- 
visers had, even the agreeable druggist. Hardly 
any one ever goes to places like Joburg just for 
the pleasure of going, and they seemed pleased 
that we had come. They described the Panamint 
Mountains which shut off the valley from that 
side with a barrier nearly 12,000 feet high. 
There are only two passes, the Wingate Pass 
through which the borax used to be hauled and 
which is now blocked with fallen rocks, and a 
pass up by Ballarat. They had not heard of 
any cars going in for some time. Unhappily 
Ballarat had been abandoned for several years 
and we could not stay there unless we could find 
the Indians, and no one knew where they were. 
None of the Joburgians whom we first inter- 
viewed had ever been to Death Valley. 

It was discouraging, but we persevered until 
we found a real old-timer. He was known as 
Shady Myrick. We never discovered his 
Christian name though he was a famous desert 
character. Wherever we went afterward every- 

[3S] 



White Heart of Mojave 



one knew Shady. Evidently the name was not 
descriptive for all agreed on his honesty and 
goodness. He was an old man, rather deaf, 
with clear, very straightforward-gazing eyes. 
Most of his life had been spent on the Mojave 
as a prospector and miner, and much of it in 
Death Valley itself. The desert held him for her 
own as she does all old-timers. He was under 
the "terrible fascination." As soon as we ex- 
plained that we had come for no other purpose 
than to visit his beloved land he was eagerly 
interested and described the wonders of Death 
Valley, its beautiful high mountains, its shining 
white floor, its hot brightness, its stillness, and 
the flowers that sometimes deck it in the spring. 

"If you go there," he said, "you will see some- 
thing that you'll never see anywhere else in the 
world." 

He had gem mines in the Panamints and was 
in the habit of going off with his mule-team for 
months at a time. He even said that he would 
take us to the valley himself were he a younger 
man. We assured him that we would go with 
him gladly. We urged him — you had only to 

[36] 



How We Found Mojave 



look into his eyes to trust him — promising to do 
all the work if he would furnish the wagon and 
be the guide, innocently unaware of the absurdity 
of such a proposal in the burning heat of Death 
Valley; but he only smiled gently, and said that 
he was too old. 

Silver Lake turned out to be the place for us 
to go after all. He described how we could 
drive straight on from Joburg, a hundred and 
sixteen miles. There was a sort of a road all the 
way. He drew a map on the sand and said that 
we could not possibly miss it for a truck had 
come over six weeks before and we could follow 
its tracks. 

*'It ain't blowed much, or rained since," he 
remarked. 

"But suppose we should get lost, what would 
we do?" 

"Why should you get lost? Anyway, you 
could turn around and come back." 

We looked at each other doubtfully. In the 
far-spreading silence around Joburg the idea of 
getting lost was more dreadful than it had been 
at Barstow. There was not even a ranch in the 

[37] 



White Heart of Mojave 



whole hundred and sixteen miles. We hesitated. 

"You are well and strong, ain't you?" he 
asked. *'You can take care of yourselves as well 
as anybody. Why can't you go?" 

"You have lived in this country so long, Mr. 
Myrick," I tried to explain, "you do not under- 
stand how strange it is to a newcomer. How 
would we recognize those mountains you speak 
of when we do not even know how the desert- 
mountains look? How could we find the spring 
where you say we might camp when we have 
never seen one like it?" 

"You can do it," he insisted, "that's how you 
learn." 

"And there is the silence, Mr. Myrick," I 
went on, hating to have him scorn us for cow- 
ards, "and the big emptiness." 

He understood that and his face grew kind. 

"You get used to it," he said gently. 

It was refreshing to meet a man who looked 
into your feminine eyes and said: "You can do 
it." It made us feel that we had to do it. We 
spent a whole day on a hilltop near Joburg look- 
ing longingly over the sinister, beautiful moun- 

[38] 



How We Found Mojave 



tains and trying to get up our courage. Happily 
we were spared the decision. Two young miners 
at Atolia sent word that they were going over 
to Silver Lake in a few days and would be glad 
to have us follow them. Perhaps it was 
Shady's doing. We accepted the invitation 
with gratitude. 

We loafed around Joburg during the Inter- 
vening days. The stern, red mountains were 
full of mine-holes, but most of the mines were 
not being worked and the three towns were dead. 
Everywhere on the Mojave Desert mining activ- 
ity had fallen off markedly after the beginning of 
the war. The population of the three towns had 
dwindled away and the few people who remained 
did so because they still had faith in the red 
mountain and hoped that the place might boom 
again. The big hotel at Joburg, which was 
attractively built around a court and which 
could accommodate twenty to thirty guests, was 
empty save for us. We looked at and admired 
innumerable specimens of ore. They were- 
everywhere, in the hotel-office, in the general 
store, in the windows of the houses. Everyone 

[39] 



White Heart of Mojave 



had some shining bit of the earth which he 
treasured. We bought some of Shady Myrick's 
cut stones and received presents of gold ore and 
fine pieces of bloodstone and jasper in the rough. 
We enlisted the services of the garage to get 
our car in the best possible condition for the 
journey across the uncharted desert. The gen- 
eral opinion held that it was too heavy for such 
traveling; the next time we should bring a Ford. 
When the two young men appeared early on the 
appointed morning with a light Ford truck dis- 
mantled of everything except the essential ma- 
chinery they also looked over our big, red car 
questioningly. They feared we would get stuck 
in the sand and jammed on rocks; but gener- 
ously admitted themselves in the wrong when, 
later in the day, they stuck and we did not. Of 
course they had the advantage, for we would 
probably have remained where we stopped, 
while the four of us were able to lift and push 
the little truck out of its troubles. It was the 
most disreputable-looking car we had ever en- 
countered even among Fords, a moving junk- 
pile loaded with miscellaneous shabby baggage, 

[40] 



How We Found Mojave 



tools, and half-worn-out extra tires. Our new 
friends matched it in appearance. They looked 
as tough as the Wild West story-tellers would 
have us believe that most miners are. We have 
found out that most miners are not, though we 
hate to shatter that dear myth of the movies. If 
you were to meet on any civilized road the outfit 
which we followed that day from seven o'clock 
in the morning until dark you would instantly 
take to the ditch and give it the right of way. 

The drive was wild and fearful and wonder- 
ful. The bandits led us over and around moun- 
tains, down washes and across the beds of dry 
lakes. Often there was no sign of a road, at 
least no sign that was apparent to us. On the 
desert you must travel one of two ways, either 
along the water-courses or across them. It is 
strange to find a country dying of thirst cut into 
a rough chaos by water-channels. Rain on the 
Mojave is a cloud-burst. The water rushes down 
from the rocky heights across the long, sloping 
mesas, digging innumerable trenches, until it 
reaches a main stream-bed leading to the lowest 
point in the valley. When you go in the same 

[4>] 



White Heart of Mojave 



direction as the water you usually follow up or 
down the dry stream-beds, or washes, but when 
you cross the watershed you must crawl as best 
you can over the parallel trenches which are 
sometimes small and close together like chuck- 
holes in a bad country road, and sometimes wide 
and deep. One of the uses of a shovel, which 
we found out on that day, is to cut down the banks 
of washes that are too high and steep for a car 
to cross. 

Most of the mountains of the Mojave are 
separate masses rather than continuous ranges. 
Between them the mesas curve, sometimes fall- 
ing into deep valleys. Instead of foothills, long 
gradual slopes always lead up to the rock battle- 
ments, the result of the wearing down of count- 
less ages, the wide foundations that give the 
ancient mountains an appearance of great repose. 
They are solid and everlasting. The valleys are 
like great bowls curving up gently to sudden, 
perpendicular sides. The mesas always look 
smooth, beautiful sweeps that completely satisfj/ 
the eye. It rests itself upon them. 

When the valleys are deep they usually con- 

[42] 



How We Found Mojave 



tain a dry lake, baked mud of a white, yellow, or 
brownish-purple color. Crossing dry lakes is 
a curious experience. They never look very 
wide, but are often several miles across. You 
need a whole new adjustment of ideas of distance 
on the desert for the air is so clear that distant 
objects look stark and near. What you judge to 
be half a mile usually turns out to be five, and 
four miles is certainly eighteen. We were always 
deceived about distances until we trained our- 
selves a little by picking out some point ahead, 
guessing how far it was, and measuring it with 
the cyclometer. Dry lakes are not only deceit- 
ful about their size, but also about their nature. 
Along the edges is a strange glistening effect as 
though water were standing under the shore. 
Often the rocks and bushes are reflected in it 
upside down, and if the lake is large enough the 
illusion of water is perfect. You drive across 
with a queer effect of standing still, for there h 
not so much as a stone to mark your progress. It 
is like being in a boat on an actual lake. The 
sunlight is very dazzling on the white and yellow 
expanses and the heat-shimmer makes the 

[43] 



White Heart of Mojave 



ground seem to heave. Sometimes you have the 
illusion of going steeply up-hill. 

Nothing grows in the lake-beds, but the mesas 
are covered with the usual desert-growths, sage- 
brush, greasewood and many varieties of cacti. 
A view from one of the ridges is a look into a 
magical country. Only enchantment could pro- 
duce the pale, lovely colors that lie along the 
mountains and the endless variety of blues and 
pinks and sage-greens which flow over the wide, 
sagebrush-covered mesas. The dry lake far 
down in the bottom of the valley shines. The 
illusion of water at its further edges is a glisten- 
ing brightness. It is hard to tell where the baked 
mud ends and the sand begins. It is hard to 
tell what are the real colors and shapes of things. 
If you can linger a while they change. The 
valley never loses its immense repose, but it 
changes its colors as though they were garments, 
and it changes the relations of things to each 
other. That violet crag looks very big and im- 
portant while you are toiling up the mesa, but 
just as you are crossing the ridge and look back 

[44] 



How We Found Mojave 



for the last time you see that the wine-red hill 
beside it is really much larger. 

For a short distance we followed the old trail 
over which the borax used to be hauled from 
Death Valley. The familiar name, "Twenty- 
Mule-Team Borax," was touched with romance. 
Out of the bottom of that baffling, inaccessible 
valley, through a pass by the high Panamint 
Mountains where it is sixty miles between the 
water-holes, and over this weird country unlike 
any country we had dreamed existed in the 
world, this prosaic commodity was hauled by 
strings of laboring mules. They tugged through 
the sand day after day and their drivers made 
camp-fires under the stars. We can never see 
that name now on a package of kitchen-borax, 
humbly standing on the shelf, without going 
again in imagination over those two old, lonely 
ruts. 

We lunched at a spring under a cottonwood 
tree — Two Springs is its name, the only water 
on the route. Some one once tried to graze cattle 
there, and the water came through a wooden 
trough into a cement basin. During lunch the 

[45] 



White Heart of Mojave 



bandits entertained us with tales of the desert. 
It has its own ethics. You are justified in kill- 
ing a man who robs your camp or steals your 
burros. Out there at Two Springs we realized 
that it was right. If you lose your food or your 
pack-animal you may well lose your life. Many 
a prospector has never returned. The elder of 
the bandits remarked thoughtfully that he was 
glad he had never had to kill a man. He knew 
a fellow who had and who was hounded to death 
by the memory. He was justified by desert- 
ethics, but he had no peace in his sleep. 

Toward sunset we went down an endless slope 
among mountains, some of which were red, some 
yellow, some a sulphurous green, and some black. 
A black mountain is a sinister object. There is 
a kind of fear which does not concern itself with 
real things that might happen, but is a primitive 
fear of nature herself. Even the bandits admit- 
ted feeling it sometimes. It is a fear of some- 
thing impending in the bare spaces, as though 
the mountains threatened. A little creeping 
chill that had nothing to do with the cool of 
evening kept us close behind the Ford. At the 

[46] 



How We Found Mojave 



bottom of the rough slope lay a somber basin 
full of shadow, beyond which rose an abrupt, 
high ridge of sand. In spite of us the Ford 
gained there and we saw it far ahead crawling 
up the ridge like a black bug. It seemed to stop 
and jerk and stop and jerk again. Then it dis- 
appeared over the top. For a few fearful mo- 
ments we were alone with Mojave. How could 
rocks and sand and silence make us afraid and 
yet be so wonderful? For they were wonderful. 
The ridge was orange against a luminous-orange 
sky, the sand in the shadowy basin reached right 
and left, mysteriously shining, to mountains with 
rosy tops. The darkness around us was indigo, 
the two crooked ruts of the Ford were full of 
blue. 

Apprehensively, jerking and stopping, stop- 
ping and jerking, as the Ford had done, the 
engine clanking as though it would smash itself 
to pieces, the radiator boiling frantically, we 
bucked our way to the summit of the ridge. It 
looked down on an immense dry lake in a valley 
so big that the mountains beyond were dim in 
the twilight. At the far side of the lake stood a 

[47] 



White Heart of Mojave 



group of eight or ten portable houses, bright 
orange beside the purple darkness of the baked- 
mud lake. It was the town which we had made 
that incredible journey to reach. Below us we 
could see the little truck struggling through the 
sand. Presently it reached the hard edge of the 
lake and merged with its dark smoothness. We 
followed down the ridge in its ruts and drove 
for three miles straight across the hard lake-bed 
toward the town, where now a few lights 
gleamed. The orange faded from the houses 
and the whole valley became a rich plum-color. 
It was dark when we came out onto the sand 
again and drove into the lonely hamlet. 

A kindly German couple received us. They 
were as amazed to see two women arrive in a big 
car as we were at arriving. Once two men had 
come in a Cadillac just to see the desert, but 
they could remember no other visitors with such 
an unusual object. Mrs. Brauer doubted if we 
would find much to look at in Silver Lake. We 
assured her that we found much already and 
hoped to find much more. 

"And where did you think you vas going?" 

[48] 



How We Found Mojave 



her husband asked, chuckling vastly in the back- 
ground. 

"To Death Valley." 

"Mein Gott!" 

They conducted us to a one-room shack beside 
the tin can dump and bade us be at home. 
Strangely enough we felt at home. The door of 
the shack faced the open desert, the threshold 
only three inches above the sand. It stretched 
away white and still, radiating pale light. The 
craving which had made us seek a wild and 
lonely place responded to it. The night was a 
deep-blue, warm and luminous. A hard young 
moon, sharp as a curved knife blade, hung over 
the hills. We went out into the vague brightness 
among the ghostly bushes, and at last onto the 
darkness of the lake-bed. Beyond it the sand 
gleamed on the ridge we had come over. On 
either side the mountains we had feared were 
strong, beautiful silhouettes. In the northwest 
stood the mass of the Avawatz, a pure and noble 
skyline glowing with pale rose. The Avawatz 
had been the most fearful mountain of all in the 
sultry afternoon, a red conglomeration of vol- 

[49] 



White Heart of Mojave 



canic hills. We walked on and on, full of a 
strange, terrible happiness. The trackless, un- 
broken expanse of the lake seemed boundless, the 
mountains were never any nearer. We kept 
looking back for the reassuring gleam of the 
lamp we had set in the window; presently it was 
lost. Nothing indicated the whereabouts of the 
town, we left no footprint-trail on the hard mud, 
every link with mankind was gone. Before 
starting we had located the little houses in rela- 
tion to a certain peak and we felt like navigators 
in an uncharted sea. 

"We must learn to steer by the stars," Char- 
lotte said. "We must always remember that." 

We stood still listening to the silence. It was 
immense and all enveloping. No murmur of 
leaves, nor drip of water, nor buzz of insects 
broke it. It brooded around us like a live 
thing. 

"Do you hear the universe moving on?" Char- 
lotte whispered. 

"It is your own heart beating," I told her, but 
I did not believe it. 

We had found Mojave. 
[so] 



Ill 

The White Heart 

WE had indeed found her. The morn- 
ing sun came up over the immense 
valley ringed with beautiful, reposeful 
mountains. The big, empty mesas swept up to 
them, streaked with purple and green like the 
sea. Sometimes shining sand led between them 
to indistinguishable rose and blue. Such a pal- 
ace of dreams beckoned toward Death Valley 
behind Avawatz, the sultry, red mountain that 
had been so magical in the night; and another 
called southward to the white desolation of the 
Devil's Playground beyond the far end of the 
lake where stood a symmetrical, black, mountain- 
mass with a tongue of bright sand running up 
it. The black mountain and the shining tongue 
of sand were reflected in an expanse of radiant 
blue water. This was astonishing and we hast- 
ened to inquire the name of the river or lake 

[SI] 



White Heart of Mojave 



that lit the distance with such heavenly bright- 
ness. The old German chuckled so much that 
he seemed about to blow up with access of mirth. 
Finally he was able to explain that it was only 
a mirage. We watched it all day and saw it 
change to a thin streak at noon and widen again 
at evening. The reflections of the bushes at its 
edge were so magnified that they looked like 
trees. To Brauer's endless entertainment we in- 
sisted that trees grew there. 

Ever since leaving Barstow we had been pene- 
trating further and further into the Mojave. 
With every mile she had become more terrible 
and more beautiful. The colors which had de- 
lighted us at Joburg were pale beside the colors 
around Silver Lake, the mountains were hills 
compared to these beautiful, sinister masses. 
The sun had been brighter there than any east- 
ern sun, here it was a hot, white blaze. All the 
way Mojave had asserted herself more and more. 
In the Imperial Valley, at Joburg and Barstow, 
we had felt men upon the desert, the drama was 
partly their drama; now, though they might still 
make roads and build houses, they seemed in- 

[S2] 



The White Heart 



significant. We had but to walk two or three 
hundred yards from Silver Lake to forget it and 
be wrapped in the endless stillness. There was^ 
something awful in the silence, the awfulness 
which our savage ancestors felt and bequeathed 
to us in our intangible fear of the dark and of 
the wilderness, and the fear of being alone 
which many people have; but there was great- 
ness in it too, the greatness which is always to 
be found in the outdoors. Balzac remarks 
that "the desert is God without humanity." 
Truly the earth lives, and the sun and the stars, 
a rhythm beats in them and unites them. They 
are the drama and the human story is only a 
scene. ^ 

The town of Silver Lake, such a little oasis 
of life in the solitude, is owned by the Brauers 
who operate a general store and give board to 
the few travelers who come to the mines in the 
neighborhood. They are mostly silver-mines, 
whence the name. A few years ago there was 
considerable activity when the Avawatz Crown 
and the big silver mine at Riggs were in opera- 
tion. Miners came to "town" in Fords which 

[53] 



White Heart of Mojave 



no doubt resembled the junk pile we had fol- 
lowed from Joburg, and sometimes with pack- 
trains. The pack-train on the desert always con- 
sists of a string of burros. The burro in spite 
of his Mexican name, is nothing more than a 
donkey, the biblical ass. He seems to be native 
to all primitive places, the first burden-bearer. 
The prospector of the early days with his pick 
and shovel was a picturesque figure traveling 
across the sandy stretches from water-hole to 
water-hole. It is often a hard day's-journey be- 
tween the infrequent springs, sometimes a sev- 
eral- days'- journey, He dug and broke the rock, 
and sometimes he made his ^'strike." Then the 
boom on the desert would begin. Settlers came 
in, roads were built and towns sprang up. The 
brutalities of mining-camps which we read of 
were probably reflections of the inhospitality of 
the land. The very characteristics which make 
the desert dramatic and beautiful make it ter- 
rible for mankind to overcome. The expense of 
mining operations in that hard country proved 
to be too great unless the vein were exceptionally 
rich, and most of the small mines are now aban- 

[54] 



The White Heart 



doned. Nevertheless you still occasionally 
meet a prospector with his burros, and in re- 
mote places like Silver Lake the Ford has not 
entirely done away with the pack-train. 

A number of half wild burros wandered 
around among the little houses attracted by the 
watering-trough though there was hardly any- 
thing for them to eat. The soil is said to be so 
alkalai that nothing will grow there even under 
irrigation, A patch of grass six feet by two, 
carefully cherished by the Brauers, was the only 
green thing in town. We saw the list of electors 
nailed to the door of the general store. There 
were seven names on it. 

A lonesome little railroad comes along the 
edge of the Devil's Playground from Ludlow 
on the Santa Fe, past Silver Lake to the mining 
camps of Nevada. All the supplies for the 
neighborhood are hauled in on it through a coun- 
try of shifting sand where no wagon-road can be 
maintained. Even a railroad, the symbol of 
civilization, cannot break the solitude. Great 
arteries of life like the Santa Fe and the South- 
ern Pacific become very tiny veins when they 

[55] 



White Heart of Mojave 



cross the desert; the little Tonapah and Tide- 
water Railroad hardly seems to exist. You do 
not see the track until you stumble over it, the 
telegraph poles are lost in the sagebrush. There 
are two trains a week, up in the morning and 
down at night. During breakfast on train-day 
a long hoot suddenly cuts the stillness you have 
grown accustomed to. You jump. Mr. Brauer 
chuckles at you and finishes his coffee and his 
anecdote, and gets up ponderously and knocks 
the ashes out of his pipe and says: 

"I guess she'll be here pretty soon now." 
Presently you see him sauntering over to the 
station. In about fifteen minutes an ungainly 
line of freight-cars with a passenger-coach or 
two in the rear comes swaying along. Mrs. 
Brauer gathers up the dishes leisurely. She 
hopes they have brought the meat. The last 
time she had boarders they didn't bring any 
meat for two weeks. If they bring it she prom- 
ises to make you a fine German dinner. She 
never goes out to look at the train. Nobody 
does, except you, who stand in the doorway and 
wonder at it. Ever so long ago you used to see 

[56] 



The White Heart 



things that resembled it. It is a curiosity like 
the strange, long neck of the giraffe. Like the 
giraffe it has a momentary interest. It goes, and 
the silence settles down again with a great yawn. 
The dry lake on whose shores the town is 
situated is three miles wide and eighteen miles 
long, of a brownish-purple color. The surface 
is hard and covered with little ripples like pet- 
rified waves. It is the sink, or outlet of the 
Mojave River, whose wide, torn bed we had seen 
at Barstow spanned by an iron bridge. The 
river-bed had been as dry as any part of the 
desert, and we had supposed it was just an un- 
usually wide, deep wash. We now learned that 
in times of heavy rains or much snow in the 
northern mountains the Mojave River thunders 
under the iron bridge. On a later trip, when 
we were staying at the Fred Harvey Hotel in 
Barstow, we once saw it come to life over-night. 
In the evening its bed lay dry and white under 
the moonlight, in the morning it was full of 
hurrying, turbid water. From Barstow the 
river-bed winds through the desert to the purple- 
brown basin at Silver Lake. Were the Mojave 

lS7l 



White Heart of Mojave 



a normal river its water would always flow down 
there and the hard dry lake would be blue with 
little white waves running before the wind, but 
it is a desert-river and gets lost in the sand. Oc- 
casionally the water flows past Barstow, but it 
hardly ever arrives at Silver Lake. It came 
once in the memory of the present inhabitants, 
and covered the dry lake to a depth of three or 
four feet. The water gradually evaporated and 
in a few weeks was gone. Our kind entertain- 
ers showed us pictures which they had taken of 
the real lake with boats on it. At that time 
both the town and the railroad were in the lake- 
bed and had to be hastily removed before the 
oncoming flood. An amusing incident hap- 
pened one day at dinner when an artist from 
San Francisco, who had stopped off on his way 
to paint in Nevada, was boasting of the marvels 
of his city risen from the great fire and earth- 
quake. 

"Well," remarked our host with the same sub- 
terranean chuckle that he lavished upon us, 
"Silver Lake ain't so bad. We pulled her up 
out of the water once already." 

[S8] 



The White Heart 



We tried to imagine the great expanse of liv- 
ing water, how it would ripple and shine at its 
edges, and the purple mountain-tops would be 
mirrored in it. Once the mirage had come true. 

Every day we watched the dream water in- 
crease and diminish at the base of the black 
mountain with the tongue of silver sand running 
up it. The illusion was always best in the morn- 
ing, but never quite vanished while the sun 
shone. It was so perfect that incredulity at last 
compelled us to drive down the eighteen miles 
of the lake-bed and explore it. 

Brauer's eyes twinkled as he filled our gasoline 
tank. "You think the lake ain't dried up yet, 
hey?" We kept our thoughts to ourselves. 

The first surprise was when we reached the 
end of the lake and had not reached the moun- 
tain. It looked just the same except that the 
water had vanished — hidden maybe by the 
brush that covered the sand. Our host had said 
something about a road, but we had been so 
sure that the mountain was at the edge of the 
lake that we had not listened carefully enough 
and failed to find it, so we left the car and 

[59] 



White Heart of Mojave 



walked through the brush. The bushes were 
very small and starved, growing several yards 
apart on ground that was hard and covered 
with little bright stones like packed-down 
gravel. The most flourishing shrub was the 
desert-holly with gray, frosted leaves shaped 
exactly like the leaves of Christmas holly, and 
small lavender berries. The following Christ- 
mas Mrs. Brauer sent us great wreaths made of 
it and tied with red ribbons to decorate our 
homes, a happy present that brought the hot 
brightness of the desert into the gloom of an 
eastern winter. As we walked among the little 
bushes the sun was very hot and the mountain 
seemed to travel away as fast as we approached 
it. The second surprise was when it also van- 
ished entirely and three black hills stood in its 
place. They were ugly and looked like heaps 
of coal. The beautiful peak which we had 
seen was some ten miles further back on the 
main range which shut oflP the Devil's Play- 
ground. It had composed with the three black 
hills to form the symmetrical mass. There was 
no water either, and no trees. 

[60] 



The White Heart 



The desolation was stark and sad; sand and 
sand with hardly any brush reached to the dis- 
tant range. The palace of dreams was gone. 
Disillusioned, we climbed upon the nearest coal- 
pile, then suddenly we saw the miracle again, 
in the north this time, whence we had come. 
The town of Silver Lake was mirrored in blue 
water as shining and as heavenly as the vision 
which was lost. The houses had weathered a 
deep orange and burned in the sun. The white 
tank set upon stilts above the well was dazzling 
to look at. Trees grew beside the glistening 
dream-water. It was brighter than any town or 
lake could possibly be; it was magical. 

Thus the desert keeps beckoning to you. 
Either the unknown goal, or the known starting- 
point, or perhaps both at the same time, are 
magical; only "here" is ever dreary. While we 
sat on the coal-pile Mojave related a parable; 

"Once three brothers slung their canteens over 
their shoulders and came to me. They trav- 
eled many days toward my shining. They 
were often thirsty and very tired. Presently 
they came to a spring, and when they had rested 

[6.] 



White Heart of Mojave 



a dispute arose. The eldest brother wished to 
hasten on, but the second said that my shining 
appeared no nearer than at the beginning. 
Nay, he did not believe in it, he would stay 
where he was. The youngest, however, agreed 
to accompany his eldest brother and the two set 
out once more. They crossed high mountain- 
ranges and deep valleys, but my shining was 
always before or after. In the seventh valley 
the youngest brother also began to doubt me 
and refused to go any further. 

" 'I will stay here,' he said, 'these bushes have 
little cool shadows beside them, and the ground 
is bright with little colored stones and there are 
flowers. Stay also and let us be happy.' 

"But the eldest brother would not stay. 

"He traveled all the years of his life toward 
my shining. The second brother turned the 
spring into a lake and built himself a house with 
orange-groves around it. The third brother 
rested in the cool shadows and rejoiced in the 
little bright stones." 

We listened intently, but there was no moral. 



[6a] 



The White Heart 



In spite of our host's "Mein Gottl" we still 
persisted in our idea of going to Death Valley. 
It was now only thirty miles away where a shin- 
ing such as had led the brothers on beckoned be- 
yond the Avawatz. We learned that this route 
was impossible for a car, and so dry that even 
pack-animals could hardly enter the valley that 
way. However, we could make a detour of 
nearly two hundred miles, striking the Tonopah 
and Tidewater Railroad again at Zabrisky or 
Death Valley Junction, and possibly get in that 
way. During the debate the sheriff of Silver 
Lake, a silent person decorated with pistols, 
volunteered to go with us beyond the Avawatz 
as far as Saratoga Springs, and as much further 
as we could drive the car. He would promise 
nothing as he had not been there for some time 
and was a cautious man, but he thought we 
might find it worth while. Any one of those 
bright paths was worth while to us, and we 
eagerly agreed. 

That day's excursion proved even more 
memorable than the drive from Joburg. It was 
like a continuation of it, becoming ever wilder 

[63] 



White Heart of Mojave 



and stranger. We had already heard a few of 
Mojave's songs, bits of her color-songs, and her 
peace-songs, and underneath like a rumbling 
bass her terror-song — but we were as yet only 
acquaintances on the way to intimacy. Ever 
since leaving Barstow we had felt that we 
were advancing through progressive suggestion 
toward some kind of a climax. Mojave was 
leading us on to something. Her heart still lay 
beyond. 

A good enough track led north along the rail- 
road for a few miles and then swung around the 
base of the Avawatz. We drove up an inter- 
minable mesa where the alleged road grew al- 
ways rougher and less well-marked, and the 
engine had an annoying tendency to boil. The 
wind was from behind and the heat of the sun 
radiating up from the white ground made it 
impossible to keep the engine cool. We 
crossed a ridge among red and purple hills of 
jumbled rock and began to descend into an 
oblong, sandy basin. The road became so un- 
speakable that the Sheriff advised leaving it for 
the white, unbroken sand of a wash. For miles 

[64] 



The White Heart 



we made our own track, winding around stones 
and islands of brush. We were in a sort of out- 
post-valley south of Death Valley itself, and 
separated from it by what looked like a low 
ridge of gravel, but we no longer believed in the 
reality of what we thought we saw. As a mat- 
ter of fact the ridge was succeeded by others, 
and the only way to get into the main valley was 
through an opening with the startling name of 
Suicide Pass. The valley we were in is usually 
considered to be a part of Death Valley; on 
many maps the low basins stretching north from 
the Avawatz for nearly a hundred miles are in- 
cluded under that name. 

On both sides of the outpost-valley stood 
mountains of every hue. They were maroon, 
violet, or black at the base shading into lighter 
reds and clear yellows. One yellow mountain 
had a scarlet spot on its summit like a wound 
that bled. The dark bases of the mountains had 
a texture like velvet, black and purple and olive- 
green velvet, folded around their feet. As we 
descended the wash toward sea-level the heat 
and brightness of the sun steadily increased. 

[6s] 



White Heart of Mojave 



Each color shown in its intensity. The bottom 
of the valley was streaked with deposits of white 
alkali that glistened blindingly. The whole 
world was an ecstasy of light. 

Saratoga Springs is a blue pool with green 
rushes growing around it, in the angle of a dark 
red mountain. The water bubbled up from the 
bottom of the little pool. A marsh full of green 
grass and coarse, white flowers led back from the 
pool, spreading out into a sheet of clear water 
which reflected the bare mountains and the 
vividly green rushes. Though this real lake in 
the desert was a pure and lovely blue, and daz- 
zlingly bright, it had none of the magicalness 
of the dream-water by the three black hills. 
Somehow it just missed enchantment. Hence- 
forth we would be able to distinguish mirage by 
this indescribable quality. 

Saratoga is the last appearance of the Arma- 
gosa, or Bitter River, before it loses itself in 
Death Valley. Like the Mojave River the 
Armagosa gets lost. It flows southward through 
the desert, sometimes roaring down a rocky 
gorge, sometimes vanishing completely for 

[66] 



The White Heart 



miles in a sandy stretch, then reappearing un- 
accountably to form oases like the one at Sara- 
toga. Opposite the southern end of Death Val- 
ley it suddenly changes its mind and turns north 
on itself to enter the valley where it makes a 
great bog encrusted with white, alkali deposits. 
The Armagosa flows through an alkali desert 
carrying along minerals in solution, which give 
its water the taste that has gained for it the 
name of Bitter River. The water of Saratoga 
Springs is flat and unpleasant, though it is fit to 
drink. There are stories of poison-water in 
Death Valley, but most of the springs are merely 
so full of alkali and salt that they are repulsive 
and do not quench thirst. At Silver Lake the 
water is strongly alkali. Everybody uses it, but 
when a supply of clear spring-water can be 
hauled in from the mountains they all rejoice. 
The Sherifif's partner, Charley, had a barrel full 
which he shared with us while we were there. 
The pool at Saratoga was full of little darting 
fish, strange to see in the silent, lifeless waste. 
The Sheriff saved some of his lunch for them 
and sat a long time on the edge throwing in 

[67] 



White Heart of Mojave 



crumbs. Once, he told us, he had camped there 
alone for three months prospecting the hills, 
and they had been his friends. 

We attempted to drive beyond Saratoga 
Springs. There was supposed to be a road, but 
neither Charlotte nor I could discern it. We 
bumped along over ground so cut by shallow 
water-channels that after about seven miles we 
dared not proceed, for a wrecked car in that 
shining desolation would stay forever where it 
smashed. We tried to walk to the top of the 
gravel-ridge that seemed to shut ofif the main 
valley. It looked near and innocent enough, but 
when we tried to reach it over the dazzling- 
ground under the blazing sun we found, to our 
surprise, that we could not. The temperature 
was about 95 degrees, and the air very dry. The 
heat alone would have been quite bearable had it 
not been augmented by the white glare. Sud- 
denly we realized that the little ridge was Inac- 
cessible; all the little yellow hills and ridges, 
and the rocky crests that shone like burnished 
metal, were likewise inaccessible. The realiza- 
tion brought a terrifying sense of helplessness. 

[68] 



The White Heart 



Here was a country you could not travel over: 
though your goal were in sight you might never 
reach it. The strength and resourcefulness you 
relied on for emergencies were of no avail; an 
empty canteen, a lost burro, a smashed car, and 
your history might be finished. We began to 
understand why this place, so gay with color, 
so flooded with light, so clean, so bright, was 
called Death Valley. 

Before us was the opening in the mountains 
where the terrible valley itself lay. It was mag- 
nificent in the biggest sense of that big, ill-used 
word. On the east side rose the precipitous 
Panamints with a thin line of snow on their 
summits; opposite them the dark buttresses of 
the Funeral Mountains faded back into dim- 
ness. Between the ranges hung a blue haze of 
the quality of the sky, like the haze that had 
obscured the hot Imperial Valley. The moun- 
tains were majestic, immovable, their summits 
dwelt in the living silence. The haze had the 
magicalness of mirage. We longed to go on 
while the sun went down and the silence turned 
blue, for now we were certain that under that 

[69] 



White Heart of Mojave 



haze, between those imposing walls, lay the cli- 
max to which Mojave had been leading us, her 
White Heart. She could never be more deso- 
late, or stiller or grander. It was the logical 
journey's end, and what had been at first merely 
a casual choice of destination became a fixed 
goal to be reached through any hazards. 

"If you go there," the old prospector had said, 
"you will see something you won't see anywhere 
else on earth." 



[70] 



IV 

The Outfit 

DEATH VALLEY was the goal, but after 
the day at Saratoga Springs one thing 
was certain: no matter if we could get 
there in an automobile — and various expedients 
were suggested to make it possible, even safe — 
not thus would we enter the White Heart, not 
with the throbbing of an engine, not dependent 
on gasoline, not limited in time, not thwarted 
by roads. When we went it would be slowly, 
quietly, camping by the springs, making fires of 
the brush, sleeping under the open sky, listening, 
watching. We had found the outdoors on the 
desert a wonderful thing and we wanted to live 
with it a while. If the White Heart was the 
climax of Mojave we felt that it must be a 
climax of the feel of the outdoors, one of its 
supreme expressions. We were going on a pil- 
grimage to that. 

[71] 



White Heart of Mojave 



Such a pilgrimage meant an outfit, either a 
wagon or a pack-train, and a guide. We needed 
a man accustomed to living on the desert, who 
knew the valley thoroughly, who could work in 
its heat and brightness, and who had the courage 
to take two ignorant enthusiasts there. We had 
lost the easy assurance with which we had talked 
at Joburg about going to Death Valley. No 
wonder the inhabitants of that town had been 
stunned when we said that we were on the way 
there! The unspeakable road beyond Saratoga 
Springs and the little gravel-ridge which we 
could not climb were sufficient warning of the 
nature of the undertaking. Mojave is not easily 
to be known as we would know her. She keeps 
herself to herself. The season added a further 
complication. Soon it would be April and the 
heat in the valley would be too great for us to 
endure. The pilgrimage must start no later 
than January. That meant going home and 
coming back. As usual the way to the valley 
bristled with difficulties. 

We talked to the Sheriff about it. Julius 
Meyer was nearing fifty, a lean, strong-looking 

[72] 



The Outfit 

man. He had a fine face, very somber in repose 
as though he had met with some lasting disap- 
pointment, but wonderfully lit by his occasional 
smile. His eyes had the hard clearness which 
living on the desert seems to produce. They 
looked straight at 3^ou. He said little, the kind 
of man who announces his decisions briefly and 
carries them out. Mrs. Brauer said of him: 
"Julius is good." Beyond her praise and the 
impression which he made we knew nothing of 
him except the incident of the little fishes and 
that he had lived twenty years on the desert and 
had once traveled the length of Death Valley 
with burros; but we had no hesitation in asking 
him to be our guide. He said it was a mad idea. 
Nobody ever went to Death Valley unless they 
expected to get something out of it, and then they 
took a Ford if they could find one and hurried. 

"We are just like the rest of them," we told 
him. "We expect to get something out of it, 
but we can't get it in a Ford." 

He finally agreed to go if we would take a 
wagon. He refused to consider a pack-train, 
saying that we would never be able to pack bur- 

[73] 



White Heart of Mojave 



ros, and walk beside them and ride them in the 
heat of the valley. He did not take the discus- 
sion very seriously, for he evidently did not 
expect us to return. He thought the glamor of 
Mojave would wear off. 

Nevertheless it was a promise, and we were 
certain that when such a man promised we 
would see the White Heart. During the follow- 
ing summer and autumn we kept hearing 
snatches of Mojave's songs. A bit of pure cobalt 
in the depths of the woods, the flash of the sun 
on the tops of waves, the clear lovely blue of 
ruts in a sandy road echoed her. Thinking of 
her the eastern sun seemed a trifle pale, the gay 
brightness of summer a little dim. We loved 
the familiar, dear New England landscape, but 
we were under the "terrible fascination." Only 
the sea was like Mojave. Often Charlotte and I 
would take our blankets to a lonely part of the 
beach and spend the night there. Never before 
had we slept outdoors, on the ground under the 
stars. Knowing Mojave even a little had made 
us feel that it might be worth while. We found 
that it was. 

[74] 



The Outfit 

"We have to get used to it," we told our aston- 
ished friends. "When we go to Death Valley 
with the wagon we will have to sleep on the 
ground." 

We did get used to it and in December wrote 
the Sherifif. This telegram came: 

"O. K. Julius Meyer." 

When we appeared for the second time at 
Silver Lake in the big automobile we were 
greeted with even greater amazement than be- 
fore. We had driven over from Barstow and 
traveling on the desert for pleasure is so novel 
an idea that everybody thought us insane. There 
were a few more people in town than we had 
found on our former visit, a commercial traveler 
and three or four miners, among them a brigand 
known as French Pete, with his head tied up in 
a red handkerchief. They all took a lively inter- 
est in the proposed expedition and gave advice. 
They were courteous, but amusement contended 
with wonder behind their friendly eyes. They 
tried to be kind and searched their minds for 
something good to say of the frightful valley. 

[75] 



White Heart of Mojave 



Each one separately told us what was its real, 
true attraction. 

*'You see the highest and the lowest spots in 
the United States at the same time. Mount 
Whitney, you know, and the bottom of the 
Valley." 

Since we had never been able to see Mount 
Whitney in any of our travels on the Mojave, 
we wondered how we should be able to see it 
ifrom the deep pit of the valley with the Pana- 
mints between, but receptivity was our role. The 
highest and lowest became a sort of slogan. 
Sooner or later everybody we met at Silver Lake 
or on our way to the valley said it. We waited 
for them to say it and recorded it in our diaries: 
''Explained about H. and L." 

The Sheriff had procured a wagon drawn by a 
horse and a mule to start from Beatty, a hundred 
miles further up the Tonopah and Tidewater 
Railroad, and much credit is due him for the 
gravity with which he embarked on the folly. 
After the O. K. telegram he never expressed 
the slightest doubt of the feasibleness, the sanity, 
and even the usualness of the proceeding. What 

[76] 



The Outfit 

we needed more than anything else was a real 
reason for going, seeing the desert and having an 
adventure with the outdoors being no reasons at 
all. He furnished even that. Charlotte had 
brought her sketching-box ; he saw it among the 
camping-paraphernalia, asked what it was, and 
instantly spread the report that we were artists 
in search of scenery. We had the presence of 
mind never to deny this and by refraining from 
exhibitions were able to be both notorious and 
respectable. 

We abandoned the automobile and traveled 
up to Beatty on the railroad, a seven-hours'-jour- 
ney. On the morning of train-day our bed-rolls 
and duffle-bags on the station-platform, and our- 
selves getting into the coach in knickerbockers 
and tough, high shoes created more excitement 
than Silver Lake had known for some tim.e. 
Even Mrs. Brauer came out, and Mr. Brauer 
stood with his hands in his pockets, beaming on 
the crazy line of freight cars and the heads stuck 
out of the windows of the coaches, chuckling 
and chuckling. There was a Pullman from Los 
Angeles hitched to the tail of the train, very 

[77l 



White Heart of Mojave 



grand, with all the window-shades still pulled 
down so early in the morning. Our guide, who 
felt his responsibilities, was chagrined because 
he could not get us places in it; but we were 
more than content, especially when the conduc- 
tor, who had a black mustache worthy of one of 
Stevenson's pirates and wore no uniform, assured 
us that the coach was not supposed to be a smok- 
ing-car so our presence would interfere with 
no one's happiness. It was full of old-timers 
who were all remarkable for the clearness of 
their eyes. They were friendly and courteous, 
men past middle age, dressed in overalls and 
flannel shirts, who got ofif at Zabrisky and such 
places, where it is hard to see that a town exists. 
The younger men, and the more prosperous look- 
ing in business-suits were mostly bound for Ton- 
opah, one of the most active mining-centers left 
in the country. During the day many of our 
fellow-passengers talked to us, stopping as they 
went up and down the aisle to sit on the arm of 
the opposite seat. The talk was of mining pros- 
pects, the booms of Goldfield and Tonopah, spec- 
ulation in mining-shares, the slump after the 

[78] 



The Outfit 

war began, the abandoned towns, the river of 
money that has flowed into the desert and been 
drunk up by the sand. They all agreed that 
Death Valley was a desperate place, there had 
never been any mining there to amount to any- 
thing. To encourage us they never failed to 
mention H. and L., but they thought we would 
find more to interest us in the mining towns of 
Nevada. They made them picturesque with 
pioneering stories. 

The railroad runs along the east side of Death 
Valley, separated from it by a range of moun- 
tains. It follows the course of the Armagosa 
River as it flows south through the desert. In 
some places the river-bed was full of water, in 
others it was a dry wash. Where the water is 
certain large mesquites and cottonwood trees 
grow and the mining stations, consisting of a 
store and one or two houses, are nearby. The 
mountains along the route are scarred with mines 
and prospect holes. At Death Valley Junction 
a branch road goes to the large borax-mine at 
Ryan on the edge of the valley. 

The country is very desolate. Soon after leav- 

[79] 



White Heart of Mojave 



ing Silver Lake we passed a group of big sand- 
dunes with summits blown by the wind into 
beautiful, sharp edges. From that viewpoint 
they seemed to guard the shining illusion that 
always beckoned behind the Avawatz. We had 
seen them on the way to Saratoga, but so far off 
that they had looked like little mounds. They 
are a miniature of the Devil's Playground, that 
utter desolation of shifting sand south of Silver 
Lake where no roads are. Now we passed near 
enough to see their impressive size and how the 
wind makes their beautiful outlines. When the 
sand is deep and fine the wind is forever at work 
upon it, blowing it into dunes, changing their 
shapes, piling them up and tearing them down. 
It gradually moves them along in its prevailing 
direction by rolling their tops down the lee side 
and pushing up the windward side for a new 
summit. The dunes literally roll over. The 
artist who had boasted of his city at Silver Lake 
called them the "marching sands." North of 
the marching sands we traveled through gray- 
green mesas much broken by rugged, mountain- 
ous masses, a forbidding and stern land. 

[80] 



The Outfit 

Beatty has a magnificent location at the base 
of a big, red mountain in front of a greater, 
indigo mass. It was once a prosperous mining 
town, but was at that time partly deserted and 
many of the small wooden houses stood empty. 
Every effort had been made to give the appear- 
ance of streets by fencing off yards around the 
houses, but it was hard to get the scheme of 
Beatty. The first impression was of houses set 
down promiscuously on the sand. Some of the 
yards had gardens where, by means of constant 
watering, fruit-trees and roses were made to 
grow. Beatty is at a considerable altitude so 
that while the noonday sun was hot the nights 
were cold, sometimes below freezing. The air 
was marvelously clear. On the brightest days in 
the east flowers and shrubs look as though they 
were floating in a pure, colorless liquid, and 
the vistas are softly veiled. The air seems to 
have substance. Among the mountains of the 
desert it is a flawless plate glass through which 
you look directly at the face of the world. Dis- 
tant outlines stand but boldly, and every little 
shining rock and bush is set firmly down. 

[8i] 



White Heart of Mojave 



Prohibition had hit Beatty hard. Most of 
the ground-floor of the hotel consisted of a big 
poolroom and bar over which hung an air of 
sadness. We had an impression of moving-day 
in that forlorn hour when everything is disman- 
tled and the van has not come. The landlady 
apologized for the accommodations which, how- 
ever, were excellent. 

"We used to keep it up real nice before mining 
slumped," she said, ''but now there is prohibi- 
tion, too, and we are clean discouraged." 

She was an ingenious person. In her front 
yard, one of the prettiest in Beatty, the walks 
and flower-beds were edged with empty bottles 
driven in neck down. They made a fine border, 
durable, with a glassy glitter in the sun. 

At Beatty we first encountered Molly and 
Bill. Molly was a white mule and Bill a big, 
thin, red horse. They were hitched to an ordi- 
nary grocery wagon. Our guide seemed pleased 
with them, but we were doubtful. He had rented 
them from an Indian and said that they were 
absolutely desert-proof, they could live on noth- 

[82] 



The Outfit 

ing at all and drink soda-water forever. Bill 
looked as though he had always lived on nothing 
at all, and Molly laid back her long, white ears 
in a manner unpleasantly suggestive. More- 
over, it did not seem possible that the frail- 
looking wagon could carry the supplies and the 
camping equipment. We had purchased food 
for a month. It was both heavy and bulky; 
bacon, ham, potatoes, flour, canned milk and 
vegetables, four pounds of butter and six dozen 
eggs. It was the Sheriff's selection; Charlotte 
and I had not expected to travel de luxe like that. 
Indeed we had brought some dried potatoes and 
vegetables and had not dreamed of things like 
milk or butter or eggs. He made quite a stand 
for the real potatoes, so they had to go along. 
In spite of their bulk the canned milk and vege- 
tables are almost necessities on the desert, where 
the water is scarce and bad, for things that have 
to be soaked a long time and cooked in the alkali 
water are hardly edible. He had a weakness for 
green California chilies and horehound candy, 
so they also were included. Charlotte insisted on 

[83] 



White Heart of Mojave 



dried fruit, especially prunes. The grub alone 
made a formidable pile on the porch of the 
general store. In addition there was a bale of 
hay and a bag of grain. It looked like very 
little for the dejected Molly and Bill, but the 
Sheriff said that we could buy more at Furnace 
Creek Ranch in the bottom of the valley, and 
that we need only feed them while we were 
actually in the valley, for as soon as we went 
up a little way on either side they could forage. 
We looked anxiously out over the environs of 
Beatty, which is fairly high-up. They were 
precisely like the environs of Silver Lake, where 
the half-wild burros can scarcely find a living. 
We began to worry in earnest. By the time the 
food for man and beast was on the wagon worry 
turned to despair. It was full, and the three 
beds, the duffle-bags, the sketch-box which we 
clung to as the only proof of sanity, and the three 
five-gallon gasoline cans for carrying water were 
still on the ground. 

"It can't be done," we told the Sheriff. "You 
will have to make some other arrangement." 

"Now look here," he replied. "You stop wor- 

[84] 



The Outfit 

rying. Nobody in this outfit is to worry except 
me. That's my job. It's what I'm for." 

His hard blue eyes looked into ours with 
determination, then he grinned and from that 
moment became the Official Worrier. 

Slowly and patiently he built up a monu- 
mental structure and cinched it with rope and 
baling wire. Everything found a place. As we 
expected to make a spring that night it was not 
necessary to fill the gasoline cans. They were 
hung on the back of the load with more baling- 
wire. Remembering the day when it had been 
95 degrees at Saratoga Springs we tried to leave 
our heavy driving-coats behind, but were forci- 
bly forbidden to do so. They were added to the 
topmost peak. 

For two days all Beatty, from the leading citi- 
zen who sold us our supplies to the Mexican cook 
in the railroad restaurant who told us that it 
was so hot in Death Valley the lizards had to 
turn over on their backs and wave their feet in 
the air to cool them, had been much cheered by 
our presence. Nobody expected us to be gone 
very long and they watched the loading up of 

[85] 



White Heart of Mojave 



the month's supplies with amused interest. When 
we were ready we had to pose beside the wagon 
in the middle of the street to have our picture 
taken. Then somebody cried "Good luck!" and 
at last we started. 

As soon as a turn in the road hid Beatty the 
silence closed around us. The crisp, clear air 
made our blood tingle. We walked the first 
few miles while the Worrier drove. The sun, 
the wind, and the scarred old mountains became 
the only important things in the world. We were 
committed to sunrise and sunset, rocks and brush 
were to be our companions, lonely springs were 
to keep us alive, the roots of the greasewood 
were to warm us, all our possessions were con- 
tained in one frail wagon. In half an hour the 
desert claimed us. The sun that loves the desert 
clothed it in colored garments. 



[86] 



Entering Death Valley 

THE way to Death Valley from Beatty is 
across a shallower valley and through 
Daylight Pass at an elevation of 4,317 
feet. First the road winds down around small, 
rough hills, at whose base the deserted town of 
Ryolite is situated. Ryolite is what remains of 
a mining boom. It is pushed into a cove of a 
rose-colored mountain — but desert mountains 
change their hues so often that it may not always 
be rose. Ryolite is a typical American ruin. 
Its boom was very brief. The town sprang up 
over-night. Money was poured in. Water was 
brought for miles in a pipe-line, a railroad from 
Beatty begun, and permanent buildings erected 
— it had the pride of a "thirty thousand dollar 
hotel," and a bank to match. Immense energy 
and enthusiasm of youth, middle-aged greed, too, 
with its eye on the immediate main chance, went 

[87] 



White Heart of Mojave 



into its making. No doubt some people profited 
by the building of Ryolite. It was a tumult of 
"American initiative" — then it did not pay. It 
is easy to picture the promoters, their important 
hurry, their "up-to-date methods," their big 
talk. It is easy to picture the investors too. 
Nearly everybody who has money to invest buys 
stock in a gold mine once. Great hopes con- 
verged on the desert here from many a board- 
sidewalked town and prairie-farm; futures were 
built on it. There is a throb in the throat for 
Ryolite, fading into the mountain, its corru- 
gated-iron roofs rusting red like the hills. The 
desert is licking the wound with her sandy 
tongue until not even a scar will remain. Sooner 
or later she heals all the little scratches men 
^make on her surface. 

The dead town faced a wide valley stretching 
like a green meadow to the opposite mountains. 
The thick sagebrush melted together into a 
smooth sward over which cloud-shadows floated. 
The sun evoked lovely, changing color-tones 
from it, like a musician playing upon his instru- 
ment, making harmonies of violet and brown and 

[88] 



Entering Death Valley 



sage-green flow beneath a melody of pure blue. 
A perfectly straight road cut a white line 
through the meadow. The distance was ten 
miles, but no one unaccustomed to the clear air 
of the desert would guess it to be more than 
three. The road appeared level with a slight 
rise under the western mountains which had 
strong, dark outlines on the sky. They looked 
purple and their lower masses kept emerging 
from the main range and fading again as the 
shadows circled. 

It took Molly and Bill a long time to travel 
the straight, white line. By turn we drove and 
walked, as the three of us could not ride in 
the wagon at once. Already the superiority of 
this mode of travel over Fords was being dem- 
onstrated. We felt the simple bigness of the 
desert, and were intimate with the indigo shadow 
under each little bush, and the bright-colored 
stones; we had time to make digressions to some 
new cactus or strange-looking rock while Molly 
and Bill plodded on. For hours we crossed the 
valley, hardly seeming to progress. The same 
landscape was always before us, yet we were in 

[89] 



White Heart of Mojave 



the midst of a changing pageant. Soon Ryoiite 
was lost in a mass of pale rose and blue that 
seemed like a gate to another world. The 
knowledge that the mountains were made of dull- 
red, crumbling rock, and that only Beatty lay 
behind them could not destroy the illusion. It 
grew fairer as we left it. The dark mountains 
in front became formidable silhouettes as the 
afternoon sun inclined toward them. We could 
never quite see the canyon by which we were 
to reach the pass; several times we thought we 
saw it, only to lose it again in the subtleties of 
shifting shadows. 

Soon after crossing the middle of the valley 
the road began a long, brutal ascent. Mile after 
mile it steadily climbed until the sweat made 
furrows in the shaggy coats of Molly and Bill; 
but to us, walking ahead of the wagon, the valley 
looked level as before, and only our greater exer- 
tion convinced us of the rise. Here was one of 
the characteristic mesas of the Mojave; nothing 
is quite flat there except the narrow bottoms 
of the valleys. Suddenly the road reached the 
outposts of the mountain and became much 

[90] 




,^^^*^^«^ 



Entering Death Valley 



steeper through the sandy wash of a canyon. The 
walls on either side gradually grew higher and 
the sand deeper. The ungainly load proved 
almost too much for the desert-proof steeds. At 
times we all three had to push, and we often 
had to stop to rest. Night came while we were 
still toiling upward. It was cold, and a bit- 
ter wind blew between the walls. During one 
of the halts the Worrier gathered up some bits 
of wood by the roadside, the remains of a 
ruined shack, and thrust them under the cinch- 
ropes. 

"We'll need them," he said, buttoning his 
inadequate coat to the chin. "We're in luck.'* 

"You'll find we're always in luck," we told 
him through chattering teeth. 

At last Molly and Bill succeeded in reaching 
the top of the pass. The spring was still half a 
mile away in the side of a mountain. We did 
not attempt to take the wagon there, but the 
Worrier took the tired animals and brought 
back the water while Charlotte and I found a 
place fairly sheltered from the wind in the bot- 
tom of a wash, lugged down the bits of firewood 

[91] 



White Heart of Mojave 



and the "kitchen," and began to cook our first 
meal on the desert. Soon we heard the Worrier 
shouting unintelligible things. Much alarmed 
we scrambled hastily up out of the wash to find 
him returning, followed by a troop of wild bur- 
ros. They were not in the least discouraged by 
his violent remarks, but came all the way and 
stood in a half -circle around the wagon, twitch- 
ing their furry ears. He was noisily vehement. 
He said that they would steal and eat anything 
from our blankets to his precious chilies sealed 
up in tin cans; that they had no conscience, they 
were the pirates of the desert. During dinner he 
kept making excursions to the top of the wash to 
throw stones at them. He guarded the wagon all 
night by sleeping under it, a practice which he 
continued throughout the trip, greatly tranquil- 
izing our minds. Burros and coyotes were the 
only marauders, and we knew that they would 
have a hard time of it. Charlotte and I dragged 
our bed-rolls a little way down the wash. It 
was a wild night. The stars had an icy glitter 
and the wind made dismal noises among the 
fearsome-looking mountain-tops; before morn- 

[92] 



Entering Death Valley 



ing it snowed a little, but we were too tired to 
care. 

The rising sun awoke us. It leapt up over the 
mountains; soon every trace of the light snow 
was gone, the ground dry, and the air warm. 
From Daylight Springs a fairly good track led 
down eight miles to the northern rim of Death 
Valley. Near the end of the descending canyon 
Corkscrew Mountain appeared, a symmetrical 
mass, striking both on account of its red color 
like crumbling bricks and for the perpendicular 
cliff which spirals around it like a corkscrew. 
Through the field-glass the cliff was a dark violet 
and might be a hundred or more feet high. 
Corkscrew Mountain stands out boldly from its 
fellows, nor while we were in the valley did we 
ever lose sight of its sun-bright bulk. It became 
our landmark in the north. 

Opposite Corkscrew Mountain the road 
turned abruptly around a point of rock. Char- 
lotte and I were walking ahead of the wagon, 
we went gayly to the end of the promontory and 
were brought to a sudden stop by what we saw. 
There, without any warning of its nearness, like 

[93] 



White Heart of Mojave 



an unexpected crash of orchestral music, lay the 
terrible valley, the beautiful, the overwhelming 
valley. 

The Official Worrier stopped the w^agon. 
Though he thought us insane, though he declared 
he could see none of the colors and enchantments 
we had been pointing out to him, he was moved. 
From the look that came into his eyes we knew 
that, whether he admitted it or not, like Shady 
Myrick he was under the terrible fascination of 
Mojave. That, after all, was why he had been 
willing to come with us to the White Heart. 
"Well," he said brusquely, "that's her!" 
We all stood silent then. We were about three 
thousand feet above the bottom of the valley 
looking down from the north over its whole 
length, an immense oblong, glistening with white, 
alkali deposits, deep between high mountain 
walls. We knew that men had died down there 
in the shimmering heat of that white floor, 
we knew that the valley was sterile and dead, 
and yet we saw it covered with a mantle of such 
strange beauty that we felt it was the noblest 
thing we had ever imagined. Only a poet could 

[94] 



Entering Death Valley 



hope to express the emotion of beauty stronger 
than fear and death which held us silent moment 
after moment by the point of rock. Perhaps 
some day a supreme singer will come around 
that point and adequately interpret that thrill- 
ing repose, that patience, that terror and beauty 
as part of the impassive, splendid life that always 
compasses our turbulent littleness around. Be- 
fore terror and beauty like that, something inside 
you, your own very self, stands still; for a while 
you rest in the companionship of greatness. 

The natural features which combined to pro- 
duce this tremendous effect came slowly to our 
understanding. They were so unlike anything 
in our experience, even of the wonders of the 
outdoors, that they bewildered us. The strange 
can only be made comprehensible by comparison 
to the familiar, and perhaps the best comparison 
is to a frozen mountain-lake. The smooth, white 
bottom of the valley looks more like a frozen 
lake than like anything else, and yet it looks so 
little like a lake that the simile does not come 
easily to the mind. Death Valley is level like a 
lake, it is bare like a lake, cloud-shadows drift 

[95] 



White Heart of Mojave 



over it as over a lake, the precipitous mountains 
seem to jut into it as mountains jut into a lake, 
but there the comparison ends and its own unfa- 
miliar beauties begin. 

Evanescent streaks and patches of color float 
over the shining floor between the changing hills. 
It reflects them. Sometimes a path made of 
rose tourmalines crosses it, or a blue patch lies 
near one edge as though a piece of the sky had 
fallen down. Lines of pure cobalt, pools of 
smoky blue, or pale yellow, or pink lavender 
are there, all quiveringly alive. At times the 
white crust shines like polished silver, at others 
it turns sullenly opaque. Now a blue river 
flows down the center — now it moves over under 
the western wall — now it gathers itself into a 
pond around which green rushes grow. 

High above the middle of the valley tower 
the Panamint Mountains. That winter their 
summits were covered with snow as white as the 
white floor, and as shining. Without apparent 
break into foothills they rise nearly 12,000 feet. 
Seldom, even in the highest ranges, can you see 
so great a sheer rise, for most mountains are 

[96] 



Entering Death Valley 



approached from a considerable elevation. In 
Death Valley the eye begins its upward journey 
below sea-level. Down there the white floor 
shimmered and seemed to move while above it 
the two peaks of Telescope and Mount Baldy, 
joined by a long curving ridge of snow, were a 
remote, still whiteness. 

The eastern wall of the valley is not so high, 
but is hardly less impressive. The Funeral 
Mountains are steel-blue with layers of white 
rock near their summits. Both the moun- 
tains and the valley were named because of 
tragedies down on that white floor during pio- 
neering and prospecting days. It is impossible 
to get the details of the stories from the old- 
timers, each has a dififerent version and no one 
is very clear even about his own. One story is 
of a party of emigrants, men, women, and chil- 
dren, on the way to the gold-fields with all their 
household goods, who entered the valley by mis- 
take and could not find a way out; another is of 
a party who were attacked by Indians and fought 
in a circle they made of their wagons until the 
last man was killed. The remains of the wagons 

[97] 



White Heart of Mojave 



are said to be buried in the sand near a place 
called Stovepipe Wells. We never could learn 
the exact location, though on a later trip v^e met 
a man who said that he had once actually found 
them, and that he had seen Indians around there 
wearing jewelry and using utensils which they 
could only have obtained from the white man 
sometime in the fifties. There are also stories 
of individual prospectors who perished on the 
burning sands. It does not matter which par- 
ticular tragedy fastened such names on this 
region of celestial day, they commemorate all 
whose last sight of the earth was that lonely 
splendor. 

The Funeral Range is separated by a deep 
canyon from the Black Mountains which con- 
tinue the eastern wall of the valley. This wall 
is from five to six thousand feet high, jutting 
into the basin in great promontories as moun- 
tains jut into a rock-ringed lake. The range 
across the southern end is not so high and was 
half hidden by an opalescent haze. All the time 
we were in the valley that haze persisted. Only 
rarely and for short periods could we see any 

[98] 



Entering Death Valley 



detail in the depths of the hot basin, though the 
foreground sparkled in the stark, clear air. The 
Imperial Valley and Death Valley are always 
hung with misty curtains. 

A long, long slope leads from the rock prom- 
ontory from which we first saw the valley down 
to that shimmering pit. It is very rocky, cut 
by washes and sparsely covered with sagebrush 
and greasewood. Occasional little yellow or 
blue hills rise like islands from blue-green 
waves. The ground is covered with little stones 
of every conceivable color, which flash back the 
sunlight from their polished surfaces. Unfa- 
miliar green and purple stones lie around, and 
bright red stones, and a stone of a strange orange- 
color like flame. A mass of this is what we must 
have seen at Saratoga Springs on the mountain 
that bled. The impulse to pick up specimens 
was irresistible. This proved to be the curse of 
walking over the bright mosaics. Each little 
stone was of a color or texture more alluring 
than the last until our pockets became unbear- 
ably heavy. Every resting-time was spent in 
trying to decide which ones to throw away, but 

[99] 



White Heart of Mojave 



as we could not possibly throw one away on the 
same day that we picked it up, this was a fruit- 
less occupation. 

About noon we lunched in the shade of one of 
the little hill-islands. During the descent the 
heat had steadily increased and the sun shone 
with white, blinding intensity. The Official 
Worrier grew expansive and happy. He de- 
scribed himself as a "desert rat," and said that 
the hot brilliance suited him entirely. He called 
it a pleasant, warm day. Charlotte and I were 
continually looking at the little blue spots of 
shade behind a bush or projecting rock to rest 
our eyes. We could no longer look away over 
the valley, objects merged and vanished there. 
One of my recurring dreams since childhood is 
of trying to walk or run in a light so dazzling 
that I could not keep my eyes open for more 
than a few seconds at a time. That day my 
dream strikingly came true. Everywhere bright 
heat-waves ran over the ground. The surface 
of stones and the tips of leaves glittered daz- 
zlingly. It was probably no hotter than it had 
been at Saratoga, but the reflection of light from 

[lOO] 



Entering Death Valley 



the immense white bottom of the valley was an 
almost unbearable brightness. 

Our destination was an abandoned gold-mine 
on the side of the Funeral Range. From the 
lunch-place the Keane Wonder Mine looked on 
a level with us and quite near, but we traveled 
two hours and made a stiff climb to reach it. 
This was the hardest bit of marching that we 
did, for we were too ignorant of the effects of 
such a combination of heat and blinding light to 
know how to conduct ourselves. We thought 
we were sick or overtired, and being much too 
proud to let the Worrier suspect such a thing, 
pressed on without stopping often enough to 
rest. We had not yet learned that the wagon 
was always accompanied by a blessed bit of 
shade that we could sit down in any time. Later 
we appreciated fully this happy attribute of 
wagons. More than once we were grateful to 
the Worrier for refusing to come with a pack- 
train. 

The mine was a large plant which had paid 
well. A mess of buildings, some half-blown- 
down, pieces of machinery and the big red mill 

[lOl] 



White Heart of Mojave 



huddled at the mouth of the canyon where the 
mountain rises steeply from the mesa. The mine 
itself was higher up the canyon down which the 
ore was swung in huge buckets that ran on iron 
cables. Water had been piped from a spring a 
mile away, but the pipe was broken. The 
ground was far too rough to allow us to take the 
wagon to the spring, so once more the Worrier 
led off Molly and Bill and brought back water 
in a pail. Earlier in the day we had lamented 
the necessity of camping among wreckage, but 
when we reached the first building, which once 
had been a barn, its oblong, indigo shadow was 
Heaven. We lay prone on the ground behind it 
until the sun went down, not attempting to un- 
load the wagon or do any useful thing. The 
Worrier found us thus on his return and gravely 
opined that we had better stay a while at Keane 
Wonder and try to get acclimated. 

During the three days that we camped behind 
the barn we were living about a thousand feet 
above the bottom of that amazing valley, look- 
ing down into it and up at the still, white peaks 
of the Panamints above it. Opposite Keane 

[102] 



Ti'^'i 




Entering Death Valley 



Wonder what looked like a low, sandy ridge 
separates the main sink of Death Valley from 
a similar though smaller and less striking basin 
called the Mesquite Valley. The high Pana- 
mints end in a stern red mass near the sand-ridge, 
beyond which a long slope like the one we had 
come down leads to more distant mountains 
which, however, are a continuation of the range. 
Emigrant Pass through the mountains over to 
Ballarat starts from the slope and winds around 
behind the stern, red mass. That may well have 
been the way out which the party of emigrants 
who perished sought and did not find. Most 
of the time the steadily pressing wind of the 
desert blew through the great, bright space. 
Often we saw it pick up the sand far down at the 
edge of the valley and whirl it along in tall 
wraiths that looked like ghosts walking over the 
white floor. 

On the second evening a bell sounded in the 
dusk. When you travel with burros on the des- 
ert it is the custom to put a bell on one of them 
at night so you can find them in the morning, and 
often the bell is left on during the day's journey. 

[103] 



White Heart of Mojave 



That sound meant that someone was coming to 
our camp-fire. Soon a frail old man with two 
loaded burros and a little dog appeared. It was 
"Old Johnnie," an habitue of Death Valley, 
coming home. He had an unworked gold-mine 
near Keane Wonder and he spent his life looking 
after his property. Apparently he was also the 
official caretaker of Keane Wonder itself. He 
performed his duties by looking over our camp 
and guarding every bit of wire and every old 
rusty nail as though they were gold itself. He 
hovered around us, especially at departure, so 
we only succeeded in stealing one iron bar for 
our fireplace, and we needed two. We cast long- 
ing eyes at a certain chipped, granite kettle, but 
finally had to borrow that, promising solemnly 
to return it at Beatty on our way back. Perhaps 
he was unduly suspicious because the Worrier 
had taken a bit of some very ancient and hope- 
less-looking hay, which we found in the barn, 
to cheer up Molly and Bill. 

"How could I know he lived here?" he apol- 
ogized to us. "Anyways, there wasn't but two 
mouthfuls." 

[104] 



Entering Death Valley 



But "Old Johnnie" was hospitable, as all old- 
timers are. He urged Charlotte and me to move 
into the superintendent's house. It had been a 
good house once, but in its present condition we 
preferred the open sand, nor could we bear even 
for a night to have a roof between us and the 
blue deeps of that star-filled sky. He was a 
garrulous talker and very friendly. He claimed 
that his mine was richer than Keane Wonder 
ever dreamed of being. Once some one had of- 
fered him $300,000, but his partner would not 
look at it. His tone implied that it was a paltry 
sum anyway. He was an inventor, too, and had 
sold a patent for an automobile-part which he 
described in great detail. We asked him if he 
still hoped to sell the mine. He seemed not to 
know what he intended to do. Plainly he was 
another victim of the "terrible fascination." He 
related how he had lately been to Tonopah and 
got sick and almost died from lack of air in the 
clutter of things. The Worrier said that he 
had money put away somewhere, but money or 
no money, whether he ever sold the mine or not, 

[105] 



White Heart of Mojave 



he would hang around Death Valley the rest 
of his life. 

**01d Johnnie" rose to fine heights as a story- 
teller when we invited him to dinner next day. 
We had brought some fresh meat which had to 
be used up early on the trip, and the Worrier 
achieved a magnificent meal. Usually I was 
the cook, but that dinner was far beyond me. He 
invaded the ruined boarding-house, wrestled suc- 
cessfully with the rusty stove, and produced a 
roast surrounded by potatoes and onions to be 
long remembered. We ate it at the board table 
in the dining-room. "Old Johnnie" changed 
his coat for the festivity; he beamed upon us 
and talked. He had the good story-teller's gift 
of suggestion and in the midst of that blazing 
emptiness steeped in a silence broken only by the 
wind clanging rusted cables and rattling the 
loosened iron roof, he peopled the dining-room 
again. We saw the faces of the men crowding 
in for their supper and heard their voices. Once 
more the camp-cook in white apron and cap, for 
"Old Johnnie" described it as a fine camp "run 
right," leaned over the table to pour soup into 

[1 06] 



Entering Death Valley 



granite bowls. Keane Wonder came to life 
while the obliterating desolation crept in at the 
door. 

He told stories of other mining camps and of 
the struggle of individual prospectors with the 
valley. You outwit its wickedness or you are 
outwitted by it. It was alive, a sort of fascinat- 
ing enemy. His words took us with him and his 
burros down its white length. The enemy had 
uncanny powers. She played strange tricks on 
you. If she could not get you one way she tried 
another. 

"You find fellers dead down there," he said. 
"And they don't die of thirst, either. Some- 
times there's water in the canteens. They just 
go crazy. She gets 'em." 

He leaned closer across the table and his voice 
became lower. 

"And you hear 'em in the night," he whis- 
pered. 

"Hear who?" 

"Them. I call it the Lonesome Bell." 

"What is the Lonesome Bell?" We found 
ourselves whispering too. 

[107] 



White Heart of Mojave 



"You hear it. It's a bell. It rings regular, 
far off. Sometimes you hear it all night. It 
sounds like the bell on a burro. But it ain't 
nothing. Once I had a young feller for a part- 
ner, and when he heard it he got up and made 
coffee for the outfit that was coming. He 
wouldn't believe me when I told him it wasn't 
nothing but the Lonesome Bell. He waited and 
waited and nobody came. And the next morn- 
ing he packed up and beat it." 

Old Johnnie's eyes glittered with unnatural 
brightness. He was telling his own secret. Very 
vividly he made us see a man alone in the blue 
night, dim sand spreading away, dark-blue 
mountains on blueness. Not a sound, not even 
the breath of the night stirring the sagebrush. 
Through white, empty days and blue, empty 
nights he is always alone. He listens to his own 
heart beating. Then, far off, the faint sound of 
a bell. Then again. He listens intently because 
it is the only sound for such a long time. It comes 
again. It grows louder. He strains to hear. 
A bell belongs on a burro — he hears the tramp 
of burros' feet. 

[io8] 



Entering Death Valley 



With awe we looked at those bright, intent 
eyes and that thin body bent tensely forward. 
Some night the Lonesome Bell will be true, but 
"Old Johnnie" will not hear it. A belated trav- 
eler with his pack-train will find a dead camp- 
fire and an old man asleep forever beside it. 
"Old Johnnie" has outwitted the valley so long 
that he thinks he can always do it, but she will 
get him in the end. 

After dinner "Old Johnnie" unlocked the mill 
and showed us the costly machinery inside, ex- 
plaining in careful detail the processes of mill- 
ing gold. The canyon behind Keane Wonder 
is narrow and precipitous as though it had been 
gouged out by a giant's trowel. High up on the 
mountain-side the dumps of iridescent rock 
around the mine-pits shimmered. We sat with 
him on a beam of the ruined mill while he 
pointed things out in the valley. He showed 
us where Furnace Creek Ranch lies on the sand 
by the opening of the canyon between the 
Funeral Range and the Black Mountains, but we 
could not see it because of the heat-shimmer and 
the misty veil. He said that the stern, red mass 

[109] 



White Heart of Mojave 



opposite was called Tucki Mountain, an Indian 
word for sheep, because the Panamint Indians 
used to hunt wild mountain-sheep in its fast- 
nesses. The smooth, bare slope beyond the 
Mesquite Valley, he said, was really very rough, 
cut by deep water-channels and covered with 
brush ; and rose in that gradual way nearly 3,000 
feet before it reached the mountains. The curi- 
ous streak in the bottom of the Mesquite Valley 
was the swamp of Salt Creek, where the water 
was so bad you could not drink it. It joined the 
morass in the bottom of Death Valley. There 
were quicksands there, that you could not get 
out of if you got in. Men and burros had been 
lost that way. He pointed out little, white heaps 
down by Salt Creek and said they were sand- 
dunes a hundred feet high. 

While we sat there a storm swept down the 
big slope and around on the face of the high 
Panamints above Death Valley. First the wind 
lifted the sand in the tall whirling wraiths that 
fled before the pursuing host of the rain. It 
came on like an army of giants in bright armor, 
dust-clouds swirling before their horses' gallop- 

[iiol 



Entering Death Valley 



ing feet, the sun gleaming on their million spears 
that reached higher than the mountain-tops. 
In the midst of blazing sunshine the shadow of 
their passing was dark on the valley; for a few 
moments they obliterated the mountains. 

"Surely," Charlotte said, "it is pouring rain 
over there, yet they told us it never rains in 
Death Valley" 

"That's some rain," he admitted, "but maybe 
it ain't wetting the sand. I've been in storms like 
that when the water all evaporated before it 
got down." 

"But it must rain sometimes and the water get 
down," I objected to both of them, "for Shady 
Myrick said that he had seen the valley full of 
flowers." 

"I've seen 'em," he assented, with a sudden 
eager lighting of his face — "yes!" 

They did not happen to bloom while we were 
there but we believe in them. Anything might 
happen, anything could be true in that terrible, 
bright place. 



[Ill] 



VI 

The Strangest Farm in the World 

ON the fourth day we bade "Old Johnnie" 
farewell, and descended into the quiver- 
ing white basin. The next camp was to 
be at Furnace Creek Ranch, the irrigated farm 
in the bottom of the valley established long ago 
in connection with the original borax-works of 
the Twenty-Mule-Team brand. The water for 
irrigation is brought down in a ditch from Fur- 
nace Creek in the canyon between the Funeral 
Mountains and the Black Mountains and the 
ranch is a large, green patch on the sand. In 
any ordinary place, or in any ordinary light it 
would be a conspicuous feature of the landscape; 
but, though ''Old Johnnie" had pointed it out 
so carefully, we could never distinguish it nor 
could we see it during our approach that day 
until we were within half a mile of it. Through- 

[112] 



Strangest Farm in the World 

out the journey the valley-floor presented the 
same unbroken, white expanse. 

For several miles our way continued down the 
mesa. Here was no road, only a lurching and 
grinding down a rocky wash, crawling over the 
edge in the hope of something better and return- 
ing again to the ills we knew. It seemed as 
though the slender-spoked wheels must collapse 
under the strain. Our tower of baggage swayed 
dangerously. The Official Worrier was a skill- 
ful driver and he needed to be, not only on this 
day but on several subsequent ones which sur- 
passed it. About noon we reached the road that 
leads from Salt Creek at the southern end of 
Mesquite Valley across the northern end of 
Death Valley and along its eastern side to the 
ranch. This road was an improvement on the 
uncharted wash. There were no rocks in it; but 
it soon became sandy, two deep ruts meandering 
off toward the white floor. 

Presently we came to its edge and skirted the 
swamp of the Armagosa River, the morass of 
mud and quicksands which fills the whole bot- 
tom of the valley, an immense expanse covered 

[113] 



White Heart of Mojave 



with large white crystals and a powdery sub- 
stance that looks like coarse salt. The valley 
probably was once the bed of a salt-lake whose 
slow evaporation left the thick alkali crust. The 
ruts were very deep and the ground soft to walk 
on, spongy and hummocky. The Worrier said 
that if the wagon were to get out of the ruts 
it easily might be mired. "Old Johnnie" told us 
that in some places in the middle of the bog a 
team or a man walking could be sucked down 
out of sight and one of his tales was of finding a 
dead man's face looking up at him out of the 
ground. 

"He was a Swede with yellow hair," he said, 
"and he stared at the sun. He sank stand- 
ing up." 

The road which crosses the valley below the 
ranch near the old Eagle Borax Works is said 
to be almost the only way to get over the swamp. 
The Panamint Indians are supposed to have 
known this route and to have crossed the valley 
to escape from their enemies, who dared not 
follow them. 

A Government bench-mark by the roadside 
["4] 



Strangest Farm in the World 

indicated 258 feet below sea level. The heat \ 
was oppressive, and the white ground reflected a 
blinding light. At one place, rounding the base 
of a hill which shut ofif the view of the nearby 
mountains, we found ourselves in the midst of 
miles of the shining whiteness. It spread in 
every direction, reaching to the distant Pana- 
mints across the valley and to the hazy outline 
of the low range at the southern end. The hill 
which we were passing rose into the sky, white 
as the plain except for a few streaks of ugly, 
greenish-yellow-like sulphur. No living green , 
thing appeared. The white expanse was un- 
broken by a bush or even by an outjutting rock. 
The desolation was complete. An intense 
silence lay over it. If we dropped far enough 
behind the wagon not to hear the creaking of its 
wheels, we felt utterly alone, the only survivors 
in a dead universe. That day the sky was a hot 
purplish-blue; no cloud shadows drifting over 
the valley relieved its blinding monotony. The 
rose and silver which we had seen from above 
were gone, not even the illusion of water far oflf 
remained. The sun stared steadily down. It 



White Heart of Mojave 



was the far-spread, motionless silence of the last 
days when the whole earth will be dying. 

Winding around the hill we came to the ruins 
of a borax-works. This had been the first plant 
in the valley, then the Eagle Borax Works south 
of the ranch was operated, but now the borax 
comes from the mines in the mountains at Ryan. 
Nothing was left of the old borax-works except 
a few roofless stone buildings and the ruins of 
the works which looked like a row of immense 
vats embedded in the side of a low ridge. The 
vats and the ridge had the same sulphurous color, 
and melted together. Around the buildings the 
ground was covered with tin cans and broken 
bottles, but the square of dark-blue shade beside 
each house was a blessed relief from the burn- 
ing sun. 

Beyond the old borax-works the road wound 
through sand covered with large mesquites and 
greasewoods. Though the mesquite is called a 
tree it looks more like an overgrown, thorny 
shrub. It grows near swamps and dry lakes 
and is supposed to be a sure indication of water, 
but its roots go down very deep and it appears 

[1.6] 



Strangest Farm in the World 

in desolations of sand where it would be unwise 
for the wayfarer to dig. Those mesquites in 
Death Valley looked very hopeless indeed, 
sprangling, thorny, leafless things with a hillock 
of sand blown around the roots of each. 

As we descended into the valley and came 
along the edge of the morass a feeling of deep 
lassitude and inertia gradually crept over Char- 
lotte and me. It had been very hard to leave the 
dark squares of shade at the borax-works, and 
now as we crawled along among the mesquites 
we felt that the white monotony would go on 
forever. It pressed upon us like a weight that 
never, never could be lifted. We stared down at 
the sand with unseeing eyes and went on because 
we were in the habit of going on. The ranch 
was only an imagining, born of vain hope. 

And then the strange-looking, tufted tops of 
some tall palms appeared against the sky. They 
were very striking and we thought they must 
still be far off or we would have seen them all 
day, but not a quarter of an hour later we reached 
the fence which separated the desert from the 
emerald-green fields. The sudden springing up 

[117] 



White Heart of Mojave 



of the ranch was as unreal as any imagining. 
The fence was a sharp line of demarcation. On 
one side the sand drifted up to it, on the other 
were meadows and big willow trees. It was 
evening when we arrived, so we camped at once 
by the irrigation-ditch which made a narrow 
green ribbon across the sand with grass and 
trees growing along its banks. We built our 
fire between an encampment of Indians and the 
white adobe ranch-buildings beyond the fence. 
The water rushed down the ditch, clear and cool. 
How marvelous this running water seemed! 
How marvelous to dip out all we wanted to wash 
ourselves and our clothes and our dishes! 

Our felicity, however, was short-lived. The 
Panamint Indians, in common probably with all 
Indians, do not count cleanliness among their 
virtues. The rising of the fierce, hot sun 
brought millions of flies which converted our 
dishes and camp equipment into black masses 
that crawled. Between the Indians and the large 
herd of cattle at the ranch, camping by the irri- 
gation-ditch was impossible. We spent most 
of the forenoon moving a mile or two away 

[1.8] 



Strangest Farm in the World 

among the mesquites. We were on the grad- 
ually sloping ground which leads up from the 
valley-floor to the rock-walls of the Funeral 
Mountains. Here in the valley we found that 
our impression from the Keane Wonder Mine 
of mountains rising precipitously from the flat 
white floor had been an illusion. The charac- 
teristic mesa of the Mojave curves up on both 
sides, sandy, covered with stones, but often en- 
tirely bare of vegetation. Death Valley is 
always full of such illusions. Even afterwards, 
when we knew better, we could never look down 
into the valley from a height without feeling 
that the mountains rose precipitously out of it. 
That camp among the mesquites blazed. The 
yellow sand seemed to smite our eyes. Across 
the valley under the edge of the Panamints the 
mesa looked a beautiful dark-blue, but around 
us was an even greater ecstasy of light than we 
had known at Keane Wonder. Everything 
blazed, the sand, the slow waves of the heat 
shimmer, the little rounded stony hills between 
us and the Funeral Mountains, and the steel-blue 
battlements of the mountains themselves. 

[■19] 



White Heart of Mojave 



The Indians at the ranch are employed as 
laborers, when they will work. The superin- 
tendent, a vigorous, silent Scotchman, was ex- 
tremely pessimistic about them. While we were 
there they had "the flu" and all we ever saw them 
do was sit around the corral waiting for supplies 
to be handed out. The women and girls, with 
heavy melancholy faces, gathered and stared at 
us. They stared with the stolid curiosity of 
cattle, not like burros who twitch their ears 
saucily, though they have the burro's reputation 
for thievishness. The superintendent kept 
everything under lock and key. The only Indian 
who showed a sign of life was an old fellow who 
prowled around with a gun after the birds and 
wild ducks that make the ranch a resting-place 
in their flights across the desert. We were told 
that there was only one gun in the whole encamp- 
ment and that the younger men hunted with 
bows and arrows. Most of them looked stunted 
and their faces were wrinkled like the skins of 
shrunken, dried-up apples, as though the valley 
were taking toll of the generations of their race. 

The valley takes its toll. Most white men 
[120] 



Strangest Farm in the World 

cannot live there long. The vigorous Scotch- 
man had been at the ranch eight years and 
thought he could remain, but no one else had 
ever stayed such a length of time, and he had 
difficulty in finding anybody to keep him com- 
pany for more than a few months. He told us 
that no vs^hite woman can stand it at all in sum- 
mer. As Charlotte and I were almost pros- 
trated even in early March, we are willing to 
accept the statement. Nothing that anyone can 
tell us of the evil effects of living in the valley 
is beyond our imaginations. At times the ther- 
mometer goes up to 130 degrees, but there is 
something worse than the heat. The Worrier 
claimed that 130 degrees was not uncommon in 
Silver Lake, and that he spent his summers there 
without suffering as people do in the valley. 
The mercury never rose above 98 degrees while 
we were at the ranch, a temperature by no means 
unknown in eastern summers, yet our feeling 
of lassitude increased daily, combined with a 
faintness and giddiness that we could hardly 
combat. The blazing light had much to do with 
it, and we were below sea-level. A learned, 

[121] 



White Heart of Mojave 



scientific man has since told us that so small a 
drop in elevation could not be noticeable. Those 
old-timers who went insane on the hot sands 
knew that it was noticeable. You feel that if 
you were to go out into that blazing silence you 
could easily go insane, or succumb to the deadly 
inertia which paralyzed Charlotte and me. Too 
easily you could lie down in the thin, delusive 
shade of some little bush and forget. Even be- 
neath the willow trees beside the flowing water 
we could scarcely move, our minds were dazed 
so we could neither read nor think. We under- 
stood "Old Johnnie's" feeling about the valley. 
Something hostile lives there. 
//The ghastly, shining swamp and the pools of. 
poisonous water are horrible to the imagination 
because of their unnaturalness in the midst of 
such choking thirst. Only the perverted brain 
of a demon could have invented such a mon- 
strosity. Water is in your thoughts all the time. 
From morning until night you are thirsty in the 
dry heat, and you look out over the shimmering, 
miles and know that, though there is water 
here and there, if you leave the irrigation- 

[122] 



Strangest Farm in the World 

ditch you cannot quench your thirst. You cling 
to the narrow green line where the mountain- 
water flows down. The feeling grows on you 
that you are visiting some sinister world which 
can be no part of your beloved earth. 

And then night comes. A miracle happens 
and you know this is the same outdoors you love, 
only its trappings are put off, it is stripped of 
obscuring verdure, naked, and you find it more 
terrible than you thought it could be and more 
beautiful than you thought it could be. The 
rising and the setting of that cruel sun are great 
splendors, that dark night sky is bigger and 
deeper than in kinder countries. The stars are 
very near, floating In a sea so deep it reaches to 
infinity; they are twice as big as ordinary stars, 
they look like silver balls. The sky is a deep, 
dark blue. The whole valley is blue in the night 
and luminous like a sapphire. The going-down 
of the sun is a pageant; its uprising is a triumph. 
You feel as though you ought to clash cymbals, 
you feel as though you ought to dance and sing 
when the sun looks over the mountains. You 
have been remiss in worship all your life be- 

[123] 



White Heart of Mojave 



cause you have not learned to dance and sing in 
honor of the rising sun. The sun-god was wor- 
shiped on the desert for there the sun is a cruel, 
great god. His glory consumes the earth, but 
he is so absorbed in rejoicing in his glory that 
he does not know it. 

One night we camped a little way up the 
canyon behind the ranch in the vain hope of 
finding a cooler spot. The canyon entered the 
mountain beside a precipitous, jagged cliff made 
of crumbling yellow rock, so steep that we could 
scarcely climb its sides. We attempted it late 
in the afternoon in the hope of getting a view of 
the whole valley at sunset, but its knife-edge 
ridges were so sharp and crumbling and our en- 
durance so slight after the burning day that we 
could not reach a satisfactory summit. Being 
shut up in a canyon was no part of our plan and 
we made the Worrier help us lug our beds quite 
a way from camp to the top of a little hill over- 
looking at least part of the valley. 

"Why don't you take them to the top of that 
there peak?" he inquired sarcastically, pointing 
at one of the steel-blue crests of the Funeral 

[124] 



Strangest Farm in the World 

Range. We could not help it if he scoffed, we 
had to see the drama of the coming of night. 
Panting from these exertions added to our fruit- 
less effort to climb the cliff, we brought up a 
canteen and the few things we needed and bade 
him go back and sleep happily under the wagon. 
We ourselves had very little sleep on the hill-^ 
top for the drama was too stupendous. Slowly 
the mountains turned blue, and then bluer. 
Their beautiful skyline was drawn with a pencil 
that left a golden, luminous mark. Pale blue 
crept into the valley, indigo lay in pools among 
the foothills. The whole night was a succession 
of studies in blue like the blue nights some 
artists paint, but every shade of blue that an 
artist could mix on his palette was there. Lay- 
ers of different blues lay one above another, and 
changed, and mingled. The enormous stars 
came out and hung in the sky like great lamps. 
The sapphire valley glistened beneath them. 
The lamps swung slowly toward the west and 
then were gradually extinguished. The sapphire 
turned into a moonstone, palely glimmering, and 
then into an opal full of flashing fires. The 

[I2S] - 



White Heart of Mojave 



cruel, great god was coming. He came, and 
we were two tongue-tied fools longing to cele- 
brate him and only standing mute and bewil- 
dered. 

We always felt that longing and that bewil- 
derment during the evenings and nights and 
mornings in the White Heart. They over- 
whelmed us and hurt us. We were like prison- 
ers shut in by the walls of ourselves, unable to 
break through and be one with such beauty. We 
could not rest in it as we had rested for long 
minutes by the red promontory where we first 
saw the valley; there was too much beauty. We 
clutched at each changing, evanescent moment, 
spectators watching through tiny loopholes in 
the walls a pageant which passed too quickly 
and was too big for our understanding. 

The White Heart exceeds the imagination 
every way. It is too terrible and too splendid. 
It asserts itself tremendously; the green patch 
of the ranch lying on the baked sand beside the 
shining swamp seems more ephemeral and un- 
important than any of man's efforts to tame the 
desert; it is an unreality, a dream, and the dwell- 

[126] 



Strangest Farm in the World 

ers on it are shadows in a dream. The majesty 
of the valley completely overshadows the row of 
tall palms against the background of the snowy 
Panamints, and the little oasis of alfalfa-fields, 
willow-trees, and white ranch-buildings blessed 
with shade. They might vanish like a mirage 
and never be missed. The magnificent proces- 
sion of the nights and days passes over the white 
terror, more magnificent than other nights and 
days precisely because of the glowing of that 
terrible sand and those terrible mountains, per- 
fect for its own sake, and utterly indifferent 
whether or not eyes and hearts can endure it. 



[127] 



VII 

The Burning Sands 

EVERY day that we stayed in Death Val- 
ley seemed more awful than the last. 
From ten o'clock in the morning until 
four in the afternoon we existed in a blind tor- 
por. Eyes and brain and pumping heart could 
not bear it. At noon we always planned to leave 
immediately, we panted to escape; then the en- 
chantment would begin and we would forget 
all the plans. Soon, however, it became evident 
that we must get up into the coolness of the 
mountains on one side or the other of the burn- 
ing basin, for there was no such thing as becom- 
ing acclimated. In the stupor in which we lived 
the plans we made were extremely incoherent. 
We only knew that the mantle of snow on the 
peaks of the Panamints, so serene above the quiv- 
ering heat of the valley, was the most desirable 

[128] 



The Burning Sands 



thing on earth. To reach it with the wagon we 
had to circle the northern end of the morass, 
cross the low ridge into the Mesquite Valley and 
go up the great mesa leading to Emigrant Pass 
behind the mountains. There we would bury 
ourselves in the cold, wet snow, and rub it on our 
faces and fling it about, strong again and able to 
laugh at midday. The Worrier pooh-poohed 
this plan when it finally emerged, for snow has 
no allurement for a ''desert rat." He suggested 
that we go on up the canyon in which we were 
camped and thus quickly escape, but we refused 
to consider that. We had come for the purpose 
of knowing the feel of the valley and we must 
travel over the burning sands. 

The Worrier was amenable; he always was, 
but he liked to be persuaded. We went back to 
Furnace Creek Ranch from the camp in the 
canyon and stocked ourselves with hay and 
drinking-water, as we would find no more good 
water until we reached Emigrant Springs some 
fifty miles away. The journey over that difficult 
country would take the better part of four days. 
Two of the camps would be by so-called "bad 

[129] 



White Heart of Mojave 



water," which, however, animals can drink — the 
first at Cow Creek not far from the ranch, and 
the second at Salt Creek in the southern end of 
Mesquite Valley. The third would be a "dry 
camp,"' somewhere on the big mesa we had seen 
from the Keane Wonder Mine. 

Leaving the ranch rather late on the same day 
we passed the old borax-works again, wound 
round the white and sulphur-colored hill 
through the spongy, borax-encrusted ground 
and along the edge of the sandy mesa where it 
begins to rise from the level bottom of the 
valley. Cow Creek is a little green spot at the 
base of the Funeral Mountains about two miles 
from the road. Though it is near the ranch we 
stopped there in order to break the long pull 
from Furnace Creek to Salt Creek. In Death 
Valley every blazing mile is to be reckoned with 
and it is worth while to shorten a day's journey 
from twenty miles to sixteen. No track led to 
Cow Creek from the road, and the mesa, which 
looked quite level, turned out to be as steep as 
usual. It was broken by little washes and thinly 
covered with brush. Bumping over it under the 

[130] 




.?mM&.^immmMt. m 



\ 



The Burning Sands 



hot sun we felt again as though we were in the 
midst of an interminable monotony. The moun- 
tain seemed unattainable. Charlotte and I, 
suffering from the usual lassitude and complete 
lack of ambition, wanted to stop and camp on 
the sand beside a large mesquite, the only thing 
anywhere that cast a big enough shadow to sit 
down in, and we had a sharp argument with the 
Worrier. 

"You can't do that," he said. "It don't matter 
so much to-day, the water ain't far, but to- 
morrow you got to go on and you better do it 
now. When we start you've got to get there, or 
we don't start." 

That was unanswerable and we dragged our- 
selves on until we reached a large rock near the 
spring with a square of blue darkness beside it. 
He was satisfied with our endeavor and let us 
make camp there while he took the horses to 
the spring. Cow Creek is chiefly memorable 
for another argument, a long, warm debate as 
to whether or not Molly and Bill could haul the 
outfit up the four-thousand-foot rise to Emigrant 
Springs. Charlotte maintained that they could 

[131] 



White Heart of Mojave 



not. She based her argument entirely on the 
appearance of Molly and Bill and she had a 
good one; but I, inspired by the band of snow 
on the tops of the Panamints and the mountain- 
climber's zeal, met it with spirit. I said that 
Molly and Bill could do it because they were 
"desert-proof Indian horses." The Worrier lay 
at full length on the sand, apparently lost to the 
world. I demanded what he thought about it. 
He replied sleepily that you ''never can tell 'til 
you try." All the time we were in the valley 
we argued, and it is to the credit of all three of 
us that the arguments never degenerated into 
quarrels. Our nerves were very near the sur- 
face. Everything was difficult to do, packing 
and unpacking, cooking, shaking the sand out 
of the blankets, hitching-up, getting anywhere, 
gathering brush for our poor little fires. We all 
did the minimum of work, and the desert de- 
mands very little of the camper-out, but under 
the weight that seemed to be always pressing 
down on us that little was hard even for the 
Worrier. 

Next morning we arose with the dawn and 
[132] 



The Burning Sands 



hastened to get underway during the cool hours. 
The road layover miles and miles of sand, dotted 
in some places with sad-looking brush and 
streaked sometimes with the white borax deposit. 
As always, the morning was radiant. The valley 
was beautiful, wrapped in its lonely silence, and 
for the first few hours Charlotte and I forgot 
our discomforts in the circle of high mountains, 
blue and red in the sunshine, and the clean sweep 
of the sand ; but by noon we could not see any- 
thing and had to ride ignominiously in the wagon 
with our eyes on the very tiny oblong shadow 
that traveled beside it. Charlotte had dark 
glasses, but she seemed to suffer as much as I, 
who lived again through the nightmare of my 
childhood's dream. A hot haze lay over all 
the distances, though the air was clear, and the 
nearby little stones and bushes blazed. The 
wagon crawled on, the sand falling in bright 
showers from the slowly turning wheels, until 
Molly and Bill stopped. We shook the reins 
with what energy we had left, and the Worrier 
came up and shouted and threw stones, but they 
only looked around at us pathetically. 

[133] 



White Heart of Mojave 



"We might as well eat lunch here and let 'em 
rest," he said. 

There was no shade except the bit beside the 
wagon. We sat in that and leaned against the 
wheels. They would not move for Molly and 
Bill hung down their heads and the sweat 
streamed off them. The sand glittered with 
little particles of mica, which added to the 
glaring brightness. Toward the south the illu- 
sion of water appeared once more, not blue but 
a glassy gray with several strange-looking shrubs 
reflected in it upside down. There was nothing 
between us and the ranch to look so large, un- 
less it were magnified like the stunted little 
bushes in the mirage at Silver Lake. The Wor- 
rier decided that these appearances could only 
be the palm trees, though they did not look in 
the least like palm trees nor could we see a sign 
of the green patch of the ranch. It is curious 
that we never saw Furnace Creek Ranch from 
any of the places where we had views of the 
valley, either before we had been there or after- 
wards, or while we were approaching or leaving 
it. It sprang from the earth by magic for our 

[134] 



The Burning Sands 



bewilderment and vanished the instant we went 
away. 

That lunch-place was in the middle of Death 
Valley at the northern edge of the morass. Ever 
since coming down from the Keane Wonder 
Mine we had been below sea-level. Tradition 
has it that the lowest part of the valley is south 
of the Ranch, near the old Eagle Borax Works, 
but the bench-marks of the government's survey 
indicate that the part opposite the white and 
sulphur-colored hill by the borax-works which 
we had passed is the lowest. Two iron posts 
driven into the ground along the road had read 
respectively 253 and 257 feet below sea-level. 
The lowest point, 280 feet, was in the morass at 
our end of the valley not very far away. Whether 
being below sea-level has an effect or not we all 
suffered that day. The Worrier guessed the tem- 
perature at about 105 degrees, but said that it 
felt like 120 degrees at Silver Lake. The sun 
seemed to stand still in a hard sky. The heat 
rose solidly from the endless white sand, the 
vast glistening swamp and the metallic-look- 
ing mountains. We were in the midst of an 

[135] 



White Heart of Mojave 



immense movelessness, in a silence never to be 
broken. 

After an hour's halt we started on again, 
Charlotte and I in the wagon, though we could 
hardly bear to be dragged through the heavy 
sand by that unhappy horse and mule. Even in 
the wagon our heads swam, the ground would 
not stay still under us, the sun seemed to drink 
every bit of moisture from our bodies so we 
burned in the heat instead of perspiring. The 
skin of our faces and hands felt dried up and as 
though it might chip off. We were blind and 
parched with thirst. The water in the canteens 
was hot and did not help us much. Molly and 
Bill kept trying to stop, and little stones the 
Worrier threw as he walked behind whizzed 
past our heads and thudded on their tired flanks. 
We had to fight the hope that they would stop 
for good and let us creep under the wagon and 
shut our eyes; but we never suggested doing it. 
"When you start you got to get there." 

The Worrier himself suggested stopping two 
hours after lunch in the shade of a little grove 
of mesquites, though they were not much good 

[136] 



The Burning Sands 



as shade-trees. They were about ten feet high, 
each one with a little hummock of sand blown 
around its roots, and branches armed with long 
sharp thorns spreading close to the sand. We 
could not get under them, but for some reason 
they were more comforting than sitting beside 
the wagon. 

''We'll stay until the sun gets above Tucki 
Mountain," he said. "We're getting alone fine, 
if Molly and Bill don't lay down." 

"Suppose they should lie down?" 

"You'd stay by the wagon and I'd go back for 
help." He spoke cheerfully as though the idea 
of walking back over the burning sands was 
perfectly commonplace. 

"I suppose you could walk out of the valley 
from anywhere?" 

"Sure. Got to. I walked thirty miles once 
without no water. Blazing hot as this and not 
a bush big enough to get more than my head 
under. I laid down by a greasewood most all 
day. But I made it." 

Walking through the valley at that season was 
nothing to an old-timer. They often cross it 

[137] 



White Heart of Mojave 



in June, July and August. Death is lurking 
behind the bushes then, waiting for them. Along 
the way from Furnace Creek we had passed two 
of the sun-bleached boards set upright in the 
sand which mark graves on the desert. 

As the day cooled we wandered a little way 
from the road among the mesquite and suddenly 
came upon another one. Near it lay the skele- 
tons of two burros tied to a bush and a little fur- 
ther ofif a coffee pot beside the stones that had 
been a fireplace. Someone had written with a 
pencil on the board : "John Lemoign, Died Aug. 
1919." 

The Worrier had known John Lemoign. He 
described him as a regular old-timer who owned 
a mine somewhere in Tucki Mountain. Our 
friend seemed sorry, but his final comment was: 

"He ought to have known better. But they 
never learn. They always think they will make 
it this time." 

Everywhere that attitude toward accidents on 
the desert was typical. "Old Johnnie" told his 
most gruesome tales as though the victims were 
to blame. The valley was an enemy to be out- 

[•38] 



The Burning Sands 



generaled; if you were a fool, of course she 
would get you. It was a pity when she did, in- 
evitable and not very important. They were 
not callous, for they included themselves in the 
"inevitable and not very important." When we 
had first talked to them they seemed to us sin- 
gularly care-free and their faith in their own 
sagacity and prowess pathetically blind, but we 
found that we shared somewhat in their attitude 
as we crossed the burning sands. We felt able 
to take care of ourselves — could there be a more 
pathetic and blind faith? — and if by some re- 
mote mischance we should not be able, it would 
be only another painful but trifling accident. 
The sun-bleached boards made us sorry, but 
they did not seem especially tragic. 

The point of view is born of the desert her- 
self. When you are there, face to face with the 
earth and the stars and time day after day, you 
cannot help feeling that your role, however gal- 
lant and precious, is a very small one. This con- 
viction, instead of driving you to despair as it 
usually does when you have it inside the walls 
of houses, releases you very unexpectedly from 

[139] 



White Heart of Mojave 



all manner of anxieties. You are frightfully 
glad to have a role at all in so vast and splendid 
a drama and want to defend it as well as you 
can, but you do not trouble much over the out- 
come because the desert mixes up your ideas 
about what you call living and dying. You see 
the dreadful, dead country living in beauty, and 
feel that the silence pressing around it is alive. 
The Worrier said one night: 

"My, ain't it awful 1 Them stars and every- 
thing. Makes you feel kind of small." 

"Do you like to look at them?" 

"Yes, I do." 

"Why do you?" 

"I dunno." 



[140] 



VIII 
The Dry Camp 

WHEN the sun stood over Tucki and the 
mesquites began to have real shadows 
beside them we resumed our journey. 
The little ridge which separates Death Valley 
from Salt Creek had looked very insignificant 
from the Keane Wonder Mine, but we climbed 
for more than an hour to cross it. It was en- 
tirely bare and covered with small flat stones of 
pale colors, lavender, light-blue, gray and bufiP, 
pressed down into a hard mosaic. Instead of 
being polished smooth the delicately-colored 
little stones were marked with intricate pat- 
terns which looked like the impressions of 
leaves and sections of plants, as though a van- 
ished vegetation had left its record upon them. 
We were not scientific enough to know whether 
they were really fossils or whether the mark- 

[141] 



White Heart of Mojave 



ings were due to the action of water or some 
other cause. So lovely were they that in spite 
of the heat which still beat up from the bright 
ground Charlotte and I walked behind the 
wagon in order to examine them. There, on 
that hard ridge, where not even one sickly sage- 
brush grew, we saw the fronds of ferns and the 
stems and cups of flowers finely etched. 

From the top of the ridge the dim wagon- 
track which we had been following pitched 
down an almost impossible hill to Salt Creek, a 
marsh formed by a stream that keeps itself 
mostly underground. Coarse grass grew in it, 
looking very green in the surrounding waste, 
alternating with streaks of white alkali. The 
marsh winds down from the Mesquite Valley 
and cuts through the ridge into Death Valley. 
The surrounding country is utterly barren. A 
little way off up the bog we could see the be- 
ginning of the sand-dunes which "Old Johnnie" 
had pointed out, opposite us rose the immense 
mesa leading up past Tucki Mountain to Emi- 
grant Pass through the Panamints, at the left 
just beyond the swamp stood the harsh, red mass 

[142] 



The Dry Camp 

of Tucki, first a smooth-looking bare slope, then 
towering buttresses and crags of rock. Our side 
of Salt Creek was a jumble of little stony hills. 
Save for the grass and a few dead-looking mes- 
quites in the swamp we could not see a growing 
thing in the whole waste. 

You have to dig a well to get the water from 
Salt Creek. Several shallow holes had been 
dug where the road began to cross the marsh, 
and, as one was clean enough for our use, the 
Worrier was spared the exertion of making an- 
other. Stove Pipe Wells, near which the ring 
of wagons is said to be buried, is a little further 
up Salt Creek where some prospector once drove 
down a length of Stove Pipe to preserve his 
wat§r-hole. All the water in Salt Creek is bit- 
ter and salty, intolerable to drink. We had 
thought that we might at least use it for cooking, 
but one taste killed that hope. We feared we 
could not eat potatoes boiled in it, and knew that 
tea would be impossible, so once more we drew 
upon the fifteen gallons which we had brought 
from Furnace Creek Ranch. 

Poor Molly and Bill had no choice in the 

[■43] 



White Heart of Mojave 



matter. They had to drink the loathsome stuff 
which the Worrier drew up for them from the 
uninviting hole. However, they seemed much 
pleased with the coarse, green grass, the first 
forage they had had since leaving Daylight 
Springs. Henceforth they would have to get 
their own living with occasional small feeds of 
grain, as we could not carry enough hay to last 
for more than another two days. By that time 
we should be well up in the mountains; still, 
remembering Beatty and the thin pickings at 
Daylight Springs, and looking out now over the 
discouraging bareness, their prospects seemed 
far from cheerful. 

When we had located our camp as far as 
possible from the tin cans and ancient rubbish 
of other camps, the Worrier took his shot gun 
from under the wagon seat and went off to hunt 
ducks. Ducks! How could the desolation of 
Salt Creek, after that journey over the burning 
sands, yield ducks? At every green place 
like Furnace Creek Ranch and Saratoga 
Springs, we saw birds. They flashed in the 
sun and their twitterings broke the silence. 

[144] 



The Dry Camp 



While we unloaded the wagon that evening we 
saw small yellow birds like wild canaries light 
on the mesquites in the swamp, and many tiny 
blue birds; but it was hard to believe in wild 
ducks, even harder there than it had been at the 
ranch where the old Indian snooped around with 
his gun. 

The Worrier's assurance was so surprising 
that we put ofif getting dinner and dragged our- 
selves to the top of one of the stony hills over- 
looking the winding of Salt Creek toward Death 
Valley to watch him. From that viewpoint the 
swamp coiled between high, perpendicular, sul- 
phur-colored bluffs like a poisonous snake glis- 
tening with green and white spots. One small 
blue pool far off was its eye. The Worrier was 
working his way toward that from grass-tussock 
to grass-tussock. Presently he reached it and 
vanished in a bunch of rushes at its edge. 

W^hile we sat and waited the enchantment of 
sunset began. The sky became orange and 
green, the terrible valley that we loved and 
hated began to put on its sapphire robe, the sul- 
phurous walls that prisoned the snake turned 



White Heart of Mojave 



pink, the poisonous blue eye, too blue, too bright, 
softened — the enchanter almost had us by the 
throats again, ready to choke us until tears came 
in our eyes, when two shots spilt the spelL TVe 
sprang up, startled; we had forgotten that at man 
was hunting ducks in a swamp. A scramble 
then, back to the fireplace, a hasty match, the 
red fire kindled and leaping up, the smoke- 
blacked pot balanced on the iron bar stolen from 
"Old Johnnie," the soft clash of tin dishes, and 
soon a proud hunter coming home through the 
sapphire night. 

Early next morning we were underway, 
floundering across the swamp. The Worrier' 
fulfilled his function by doing a little worrying' 
there, for he remarked afterwards that he might 
have lost Molly and Bill. Salt Creek marsh is 
a little sample of the giant bog that makes the 
bottom of Death Valley fearful. The road 
usually traveled to Emigrant Pass leads along 
the edge of the marsh and through the sand- 
dunes before it begins to ascend the big mesa, 
but "Old Johnnie" had instructed us to avoid 
the heavy sand by keeping to the base of Tucki 

[146] 



The Dry Camp 

Mountain. There was a sort of track in some 
places, but mostly we ground among rocks and 
made detours to avoid gullies too deep to cross. 
The base of the mountain had looked smooth, 
instead it was cut by wide, deep washes full 
rolled-down boulders. For nine miles we 
skirted Tucki before we began the ascent of the 
mesa itself. Not till then did we pass a bench- 
mark indicating that at last we were as high as 
sea-level. Except that the road around the 
mountain was rocky instead of sandy there was 
very little difference between the morning's 
journey and the one across Death Valley. The 
light and heat were intense and we suffered from 
the same feeling of depression. Even when we 
began to ascend the mesa we were hardly con- 
scious of any relief. Though we climbed two 
thousand feet that day we were still on the burn- 
ing sands under the pitiless sun. Everything 
burned, rocks were hot to the touch, the endless 
stony ground was a hot floor. Tucki Mountain 
showed a dull red as though it smoldered, and 
the hot blaze on the mountains beyond the great 
mesa was smoke rising out of furnaces. 

[147] 



White Heart of Mojave 



After passing the bench-mark we were in the 
midst of an immense space far away from any 
mountains, toiling for miles up a stony barren- 
ness where only scattered sagebrush grew. The 
road was so washed out that often no trace of it 
showed and the Worrier steered by intuition. 
The wagon groaned and swayed, and Molly and 
Bill stumbled and sweated. In the roughest 
places we led them. We all walked most of the 
day to lighten their load. A long spur of Tucki 
Mountain reached up the mesa several miles to 
the left, ending in a red promontory which we 
must go around, and that point became our goal. 
We toiled and toiled, but it was never any nearer. 
A quarter of an hour, a day, a year of putting 
one foot heavily in front of the other, and we 
would look up expecting some reward for so 
much labor, and the red promontory would be 
exactly where it was before. 

In the afternoon we saw a cloud of dust mov- 
ing. We hoped it might be wind coming to cool 
us, but it turned out to be a cattle outfit cutting 
across the mesa to our road. The dust cloud 
looked near, yet it was fully two hours before we- 

[.48] 



The Dry Camp 



met the cattlemen. The sight of the big herd 
of cattle on the desert was stranger than the 
yellow and blue birds or the fabulous wild ducks 
had been. They were being driven over this 
awful country to a spring feeding-ground in 
Wild Rose Canyon, and they were white with 
dust, limping on sore, cut feet. Two men and 
a boy in big hats and with pistols at their belts 
rode small shaggy horses, galloping through the 
brush and shouting when the tired cattle tried 
to stop or scatter at meeting us. Wild Rose 
Canyon was cold at this season, the men said, 
and there was plenty of fine water in it. "A 
river runs down the middle," the boy volun- 
teered. We looked out over the shimmering 
mesa stretching hopelessly in all directions. A 
canyon called Wild Rose where a river flowed 
between the mountains I 

We inquired further into the fairy tale. The 
Canyon was about forty miles away by the route 
which we would have to take with the wagon. 
It led up into the high Panamints. There was 
a spring by some old charcoal-kilns right under 
Mt. Baldy. The cattlemen knew nothing of 

[149] 



White Heart of Mojave 



Telescope Peak. They had never heard of any 
one climbing the mountains. They supposed it 
was easy enough when the snow was gone. No 
doubt prospectors had been up, but there was 
nothing there, it was no good. We saw them 
eying the Worrier curiously, evidently wonder- 
ing what manner of creatures he had managed 
to pick up. 

After a mile or two they left us, turning oflf 
by an ancient signboard pointing vaguely toward 
the long, red spur of Tucki Mountain with the 
legend: "Water Eight Miles," and in the oppo- 
site direction across the trackless, torn-up waste: 
"Water Fifteen Miles." What are eight miles 
or fifteen miles to the modern man accustomed 
to leap over distance? To the primitive trav- 
eler with horses and mules, and until now all 
travelers throughout the ages have been thus 
primitive, a mile is a formidable reality. Mo- 
jave teaches the truth about it. At the end of 
those two days, that "Water Eight Miles" was 
as inaccessible to us as though it had been fifty. 
Even if we had been full of vigor we probably 
could not have reached it with the wagon over 

[150] 



The Dry Camp 



that rough ground. The cattlemen, however, 
on their tough little horses, went to it. We did 
not attempt to leave the two dim streaks that 
occasionally marked our road, but at dusk 
stopped and made camp beside them. 

That was our first genuine dry camp, though 
it was the third time we had depended on the 
water carried from Furnace Creek. Water is 
the commonest of all commodities, so common 
that we fail to realize its meaning until we are 
without it. All the camps thus far had been 
resting-places, homes. We had come to feel 
that any spot where we built our fire could be 
home, for the essentials of home are very sim- 
ple; a little water, something to eat, a bit of fire, 
and good friends. In the mess at Keane Won- 
der, in the forbidding inhospitality of Salt 
Creek, we had had them all and been at home; 
but that night, when the Worrier began to un- 
load the wagon in the stark middle of the soli- 
tary waste, we were not at home. Nor could 
we make it home, however brightly we urged 
up the fire or cheerfully we talked. One of the 
essentials was missing and the gasoline cans 

[151] 



White Heart of Mojave 



could not take its place. No water, not even 
bad water, not a drop! That mesa was not a 
human resting-place; we were aliens in it, tran- 
sients, one-night-standers. The Worrier laughed 
at our restless forlornness. On subsequent trav- 
els we have learned to make dry camps almost 
as nonchalantly as he does, but they are never 
home. 

In the hot miles between Furnace Creek 
Ranch and the mountain-spring we learned the 
meaning for our little lives of the commonest 
of commodities. We had never been so thirsty, 
no amount of water could satisfy us, and the 
supply was limited. We had enough for all 
our needs, yet we never could forget that there 
was an end to it. When the jolting of the wagon 
slopped some out around one of the corks we 
could have wept. Using any for cooking or 
washing dishes, and pouring out ten gallons for 
Molly and Bill at the dry camp seemed terrible. 
Until then we had thoughtlessly turned on a 
faucet, or drawn a bucket from a well, or dipped 
water out of a stream. Now there was no 
water. The miles were not only hot, they were 

[■52] 



The Dry Camp 



dry miles. The diminishing supply of warm, 
unattractive liquid in the dented gasoline-cans 
was our most precious possession. We would 
have parted with everything we had, rather than 
lose it. 

From the camping place the red promontory 
looked as far away as it had been at noon ; we 
seemed to have made no impression on our goal. 
Below us the Mesquite Valley spread out, im- 
mense and still, with the green thread of Salt 
Creek crossing it. On the far side rose the 
Grapevine Range, of which Corkscrew Moun- 
tain is the southern end. The evening air was 
so clear that we could see the spiral clifif and 
the opening of the canyon that leads to Daylight 
Pass. It looked very near, yet how many days'- 
journeys we had come from there! Heat and 
thirst and weariness lay between. The grim- 
ness of Death Valley, cool now in the shadow 
of the Panamints, was hidden by the buttresses 
of Tucki. The long line of sultry red rock that 
had smoldered and smoked all day slowly 
turned blue in the twilight. It seemed as though 
you might saunter over there and lay your hands 

[153] 



White Heart of Mojave 



upon it, yet the signboard pointing to the water 
at its base had read eight miles. We had long 
lost sight of the cattlemen. Suddenly, in the 
dusky blueness under the mountain, their camp 
fire bloomed like a crimson cactus flower. 

Evening smoothed the whole mesa into a blue 
and yellow floor rounding gently the mountains. 
It was impossible to believe that it was every- 
where cut into hills and canyons by washes fif- 
teen or twenty feet deep as it was around our 
camp. In the bottoms of the declivities large 
greasewoods and cacti grew, and occasional 
tufts of dried grass; but the wind-swept ridges 
were bare and every particle of sand was blown 
away from among the stones. On one of the 
beaten-down mosaics near our camp something 
gleamed dimly. We went to it and found 
large white stones laid in the form of a cross 
pointing toward the east. Another traveler, 
then, had stopped here. Perhaps he had looked 
at the red promontory and the spiral clifif and 
lost hope; perhaps he had prayed for water; 
or perhaps he had made it as a thank-ofifering 
for the blessed coming of cool night. 

[■54] 



IX 

The Mountain Spring 

THE next day's climb was easier, for by 
the time the sun had asserted its full 
vigor we were at an altitude where the 
air was cool, tinglingly crisp, and so clear that 
it seemed not to exist at all. The earth sparkled 
with laughter and shouted her joy in the glory 
of light. 

For several hours the red promontory contin- 
ued to recede, then suddenly we were rounding 
it, and soon afterwards entered a gorge whose 
sides steadily became higher and higher. The 
bottom of the gorge was a wide, sandy wash 
much cut up by rains, full of boulders and 
grown over with brush. The vegetation be- 
came ever greener and more luxuriant. The 
wash looked like a wind-tossed green river be- 
tween crumbly, precipitous mountains of many 
colors. Some were a dull red, some sage-green, 



White Heart of Mojave 



some buff, some dark yellow, while an occa- 
sional purple crag gave the canyon a savage ap- 
pearance. These mountains had the velvet tex- 
ture which we had seen at Saratoga Springs, 
especially the sage-green ones. The colors were 
not an atmospheric illusion for the mountains 
were actually made of different colored rock. 
We investigated them with great interest. 
Though the velvet-textured hills had often been 
all around us, they were always too far away or 
the sun was too fiercely hot for us to get near 
enough to touch them. Now we walked along 
the edge of the wash picking up the colored 
rocks while the Worrier led Molly and Bill up 
the middle. It was so steep that he often had 
to rest them. 

About three o'clock we came unexpectedly 
upon a little spring. It was in a green cleft be- 
tween a red and a yellow hill where the water 
trickled over the rock into a charming basin. 
Eagerly we dipped in our cups. It was true! 
Here at last was a real mountain spring, very 
cold, tasteless, a miraculous gift from Heaven. 
We drank and drank. The Worrier unhitched 

[ti6] 



The Mountain Spring 



Molly and Bill and they broke away from him 
to rush at the water. They did not stop drink- 
ing until the last drop was gone. 

This bit of Paradise was a complete surprise. 
The map did not show the little spring, nor 
did the Worrier know of its existence. It was 
so tiny that doubtless it is often dry. Emigrant 
Springs itself, with a much more plentiful flow 
of water, was about a mile further on. There 
the canyon narrowed with steep, high sides 
broken into some beautifully shaped summits. 
The spring is only a few miles from a big aban- 
doned mining camp called Skidoo and used to 
be an important one for desert travelers. Some- 
one once built a shack, and nearby was a cave 
with a fireplace inside, also a corral, part of 
whose fence had since been used for firewood. 
Like all desert watering places the surround- 
ings were littered with tin cans, old shoes and 
rusty iron. We know now what becomes of all 
the old shoes in the world; they are spirited 
away to the desert. An ancient government 
pamphlet that we had found blowing about in 
one of the shacks at Keane Wonder and care- 

[iS7] 



White Heart of Mojave 



fully preserved describes very scientifically how 
to locate water, then throws science to the winds 
and says that the tin can is the best of all meth- 
ods. When you find a pile of tin cans stop and 
search. It is surprising how quickly you cease 
to see the litter, provided it is sufficiently ancient 
not to be actively dirty. The desert has no fore- 
ground ; you soon stop looking much for things 
near at hand and get the horizon-gazing habit. 
If a flower or a shining stone is at your feet you 
see it joyfully, but if it is a tin can it does not 
exist. There are too many far-off, enchanting 
things to look at. You are never unaware of the 
sky, nor the beautiful curves of the mountains; 
no forests nor roofs conceal them from you, and 
your eyes pass untroubled over small uglinesses. 
We made our camp in the shelter of an im- 
mense rock that stood alone in the middle of the 
wash, and settled down for a long resting space. 
The desert was exhibiting her variety in monot- 
ony. Between the burning sands and this moun- 
tain coolness what a difference, and yet what an 
essential sameness! Here is the same glittering 
sand, the same colorful rocks, the same plants, 

[158] 



The Mountain Spring 



the same bare, crumbling hills. The sun 
blazes with the same brightness, turning every 
projecting edge of rock and little leaf into a spot 
of light. The all-enveloping silence is the same. 
The distances shine with the same illusion. 

All around Emigrant Springs are mountains 
from five to seven thousand feet high. One day- 
was devoted to a stiff climb up to the abandoned 
mines at Skidoo, at an elevation of about 6,000 
feet. A trail started up from Emigrant Springs, 
but it looked very steep, so we went a longer 
way around intending to come down it. Part 
of the route lay over high ridges from which we 
saw the splendid mass of the snowy Panamints, 
now close at hand. We passed little patches of 
snow in the shadows of the rocks. The sky was 
a deep blue all day and the air cold with the 
mountain sting in it. 

The town of Skidoo lay in a high valley shut 
off from a view by the surrounding hills. They 
were barren and made of crumbly yellow rock. 
The long narrow basin itself was covered with 
sagebrush like a blue carpet. The town had 
consisted of one wide street along which several 

[<S9] 



White Heart of Mojave 



buildings were still standing. An incredible 
number of stoves, broken chairs and cooking 
utensils were strewn about. The most imposing 
building had been the saloon, behind which a 
neatly piled wall of bottles, five feet high and 
several feet wide, testified to past good cheer. 
The Worrier said that four thousand people 
once had lived here. They had brought water 
twenty-eight miles in a pipe-line from a spring 
near Telescope Peak. During the war the pipe 
was taken out and sold to the government, but 
we could see the trench plainly, perfectly 
straight, leading off toward Mt. Baldy across 
high ridges. With the taking out of the water 
Skidoo died. 

The place was littered with paper-covered 
books and old magazines. In one house we 
found a pile of copies of a work entitled "Mys- 
terious Scotty, or the Monte Cristo of Death 
Valley." Needless to say we stole one, which 
became a treasure to be brought out in idle hours 
by the camp-fire. "Scotty" was a boon to the 
Worrier who did not hold much with the sort 
of literature that we carried around. Early in 

[i6o] 



The Mountain Spring 



the expedition he had glanced over our library 
and preferred meditation. We had a few slim 
volumes of verse, "Leaves of Grass," some wild 
tales of Lord Dunsany's and a learned treatise 
on how to paint. This last helped us to keep up 
the fiction of artistic greatness. 

From Skidoo we traversed the top of a long 
ridge from the precipitous end of which we had 
a superb view over Death Valley. We owed 
this to "Old Johnnie" who had told us to go 
there, for among the tumbled peaks of the Pana- 
mint Range around Skidoo you could wander a 
long time without getting a commanding view 
of the valley. The point from which we saw 
it that day was opposite Furnace Creek Ranch, 
but even with the glass we could not distin- 
guish the green patch of the ranch, nor could we 
see the Eagle Borax Works lower down. The 
bottom looked like a white plain with brown 
streaks around and across it. Death Valley is 
always different. That afternoon there was no 
play of color, no magical mirage. From there, 
looking straight down seven thousand feet, it 
was ghastly, utterly unlike anything on the earth 

[i6i] 



White Heart of Mojave 



as most of us know her. It was like the valleys 
on the dead, bright moon when you look at them 
through a powerful telescope. 

We stayed too long watching the shadow of 
the Panamints, as sharp and stark as a shadow 
on the moon, encroach on the white floor. Twi- 
light had begun by the time we reached Skidoo 
again to hunt the trail down to Emigrant 
Springs. We tramped around the rough hills 
searching for it until darkness made it impos- 
sible to distinguish it even if we had found it. 
There below lay our camp. Could we have 
gone down a ridge or a canyon to it we would 
have defied the trail, but it was necessary to go 
crosswise over several of the ridges that but- 
tress the mountain, and up and down their steep 
dividing canyons. Even the Worrier hesitated 
to attempt this in the dark. Getting lost is one 
of the easiest things you can do in desert moun- 
tains for they are very broken, flung down seem- 
ingly without plan, cut by deep, often precipi- 
tous gorges. The same old, tattered pamphlet 
that gives advice about tin cans also advises about 
getting lost. It says that persons not blessed 

[162] 



The Mountain Spring 



with a good sense of locality had better find 
some other place than the desert for the "exer- 
cise of their talents." Standing on top of a 
mountain you think you know very well where 
to go, but when you get into those clefts among 
those hills that look all alike you find you do not 
know. Any moment you may meet a barrier to 
be climbed over with great labor or gone around 
at the risk of getting involved in little canyons 
leading ofif in the wrong direction. 

There was nothing to do but skirt around the 
mountain and try to get back onto the path by 
which we had come. During the quest we had 
our reward and were glad. Just as night was 
closing in a shadow rose like a curtain beyond 
the mountain-tops that shut Death Valley from 
us. It was a blue shadow and a rose-colored 
shadow. It was both those colors and yet they 
were not merged to a purple. It seemed to rise 
straight up, a live thing, as though the spirit of 
the valley were greeting the stars. The beau- 
tiful apparition remained less than a minute; 
always after that we looked toward deep valleys 
at evening hoping to see it again, but we never 

['63] 



White Heart of Mojave 



saw it, though night made wonderful shadows 
and blue pools of darkness in them. Death 
Valley is a thing apart. It is a white terror 
whose soul is a miracle of rose and blue. 

About an hour later we came upon the cabin 
of "Old Tom Adams," another old-timer guard- 
ing his own mine and Skidoo. He came 
out and made a great fuss about finding 
''ladies." He had heard of us before. He of- 
fered to make cofifee, but a deep craving for 
more substantial food forbade any delay. He 
talked incessantly and would hardly let us go; 
no doubt we were the most exciting event for 
a long time. He described a way to get down 
the mountain by following the tracks of his 
burros. He swore we could not miss it, you 
just "fell down" right into Emigrant Springs. 
He went a little way with us to be sure we 
started down the right ridge; after that we 
"fell down" in about two hours and a half. It 
was the worst, the rockiest, the steepest series 
of hills and gullies we ever encountered. Pres- 
ently the deceitful moon turned the bushes into 
white ghosts and fooled us about the angle of 

[.64] 



The Mountain Spring 



ledges. From time to time we saw burro tracks 
in the sand, but we suspect that a herd of wild 
burros pastures around there. The Worrier's 
opinion of "the old fool" was unmentionable, 
nor did it soothe him to suggest that the old man 
had tried to do his best. 

Next day Old Tom appeared at Emigrant 
Springs wanting to know if we had seen a white 
burro and a black burro. We had that very 
morning. 

^'They're mine," he said, "but I can't keep 
'em home." 

Hunting burros seemed to be his life work. 
Two weeks later we heard of him twenty miles 
away still hunting his burros. The Worrier 
opined that he had no burros, but our guide was 
prejudiced. 

We learned to appreciate what it meant to 
hunt burros, for though our burros were horses, 
the Worrier spent most of the days in camp look- 
ing for them. It was amazing how far they 
could travel with hobbles on. They were clever 
at hiding, too, but we were assured that they 
were dull compared to burros. Everybody on 

[165] 



White Heart of Mojave 



the desert seems to have burros somewhere that 
he expects to use some day. They are all de- 
lightfully casual about them : 

"Did you happen to see a bunch of burros in 
the gulch youse come through?" 

"No. Have you lost yours?" 

"Yes. Gone about a week. I thought maybe 
they was over there." 

The hope seems to be that they will come back 
for water. Generally they do, but sometimes 
they go to some other water hole and leave you 
to guess which one. At Silver Lake the 
brigand called French Pete had come from 
thirty miles ofiF looking for his burros. 

"You ought to put a bell on them," our host- 
ess had told him. 

"I did, but it's no use. You can't find 'em, 
anjrway. They're too smart." 

"Do they hide?" 

"Hide! The one with the bell gets behind a 
rock and holds his neck perfectly still while the 
others bring him foodl" 

Another day at Emigrant Springs was spent 
in climbing Pinto Peak, 7,450 feet high. We 

[■66] 



The Mountain Spring 



chose it because it was the highest point any- 
where around, and we hoped for a good look at 
Mt. Baldy and Telescope Peak in order to lay 
out a route by which to climb them. Pinto 
Peak is on the west side of Emigrant Pass, over- 
looking the Panamint Valley and all the region 
to the foot of Mt. Whitney in the Sierra Ne- 
vada. The peak is not visible from the spring 
and we had to guess at a possible way up. We 
began by ascending a steep ridge leading in the 
right direction, over and among several little 
summits. The ridge brought us to a large, high 
plateau set round with little peaks and cut at 
the sides by deep canyons. The top of the ridge 
and the plateau were dotted over with cedar 
trees, for on the desert, where everything is dif- 
ferent, you do not climb above the timber, you 
climb up to it. Between six and seven thousand 
feet the trees begin, and sometimes in sheltered 
corners become twenty or thirty feet high. They 
are not large nor numerous on Pinto, but there 
are enough of them to give the ridge a speckled 
appearance from below. The plateau sloped 
gradually up toward the west and we selected 

[1671 



White Heart of Mojave 



the furthest little rounded rise as probably Pinto 
Peak. For two miles we walked toward it over 
comparatively level ground. From that side 
Pinto is not especially interesting as a mountain, 
being only a higher point in a big table-land, 
but its western side is a precipice falling two 
thousand feet into a terribly rocky and desolate 
canyon. Not until we reached the extreme edge 
of the plateau did the view open. It appeared 
suddenly, black mass after black mass of harsh 
mountains leading over to Mt. Whitney, serene 
and white on the wall of the Sierras. The Sierra 
Nevada are the barriers of the desert. Beyond 
that glistening wall lie the lovely and fertile 
valleys of California. Over there at that sea- 
son the fruit trees were beginning to bloom, on 
this side was only bareness, black rocks, and deep 
pits of sand. 

Mt. Whitney is toward the southern end of 
the high peaks of the Sierras. That day they 
bit into the sky like jagged white teeth. South- 
ward the range is lower, rising again in Southern 
California to the peaks of San Bernadino and 
San Jacinto. We could vaguely see San Ber- 

[■68] 



The Mountain Spring 



nadino Mountain, mistily white, mixed up with 
the clouds. Below us lay the Panamint Valley 
under the western wall of the steep Panamints 
which separate it from Death Valley. This 
basin is neither so low nor so large as the famous 
one east of it, but is of the same character. At 
its edge, pressed against the mountain, we could 
make out with the glass the once prosperous 
mining town of Ballarat, the Ballarat that we 
had so gayly started to drive to from Johannes- 
burg. With the Worrier's help we traced the 
route we would have come over. He pointed 
out the red mountain on which the three min- 
ing towns are perched, then came a line of low 
hills, then an immense dry lake where the Trona 
Borax Works are located, then a range of ugly- 
looking black mountains, then a long mesa 
which he said is almost as rough and difficult as 
the one we had recently come over, then the 
Panamint Valley, shimmering hot, glistening 
white, first cousin to Death Valley itself. It 
would have been a magnificent drive, but sup- 
pose we had undertaken it in the sublime inno- 
cence that was ours at the time! We had never 

[.69] 



White Heart of Mojave 



crossed a dry lake, never wrestled with a mesa, 
never in our wildest imaginings pictured such 
a place as the Panamint Valley, — and at the 
end we would have found the town deserted! 

''You wouldn't have made it," the Worrier 
teased us, "you would have turned back before 
you got to Trona." 

"We would not!" But in our hearts we 
knew how we would have been weak from pure 
fear of the ugly-looking black mountains. The 
terrifying approach to Silver Lake was nothing 
compared to them, nor would we have had a 
friendly little Ford chugging along ahead. 

As we had hoped, the top of Pinto commands 
a fine view of Telescope Peak and Mt. Baldy 
joined by the beautiful, long ridge which re- 
poses so splendidly above Death Valley. From 
this side they looked higher and snowier. We 
studied them carefully with the glass. The 
great mass of snow was discouraging, but it 
seemed to be blown ofif the sharp ridges which 
showed black. We planned to move the outfit 
as far as possible up Wild Rose Canyon which 
branches off from Emigrant Canyon about 

[170] 



The Mountain Spring 



twenty miles above Emigrant Springs and leads 
up to the far, high peaks. From there we 
thought we could climb the rounded summit of 
Mt. Baldy and walk along the splendid curve 
to the slender pyramid of Telescope. No lover 
of mountains could look at those pure, smooth 
lines as long as we had looked at them and from 
as many aspects without being filled with the 
desire to set his feet upon them. 

It is not the height of a mountain nor its dif- 
ficulty which makes it desirable, but something 
in the mountain's own self. The Panamints are 
neither very high nor very difficult, but they 
are dramatic and alone. Besides the contrast of 
their snow with the burning sands beneath, we 
wanted the feel of a truly lonely mountain top. 
The Panamints are truly lonely. They are not 
objects of solicitude to any mountain club; no 
tourist keen for adventure, nor boy scout outfit, 
nor earnest-eyed mountaineer who carves the 
record of his conquests on his pipe-bowl or his 
walking-stick, have left their names up there. 
No trail leads up the Panamints, nor are their 
summits splashed over with paint like the stately, 

[171] 



White Heart of Mojave 



desecrated summit of Mt. Whitney. We would 
not be forced to know in letters a foot high that 
on August 27th, John Doe made the ascent. We 
do not hate John Doe, but we prefer to meet 
him under roofs. If he loved the mountain, 
rather than so disfigure it, he would throw ink 
at his most cherished possession ; and only lovers 
of mountains have the right to invade their lone- 
liness. The Panamints, with their feet in the 
burning heat of Death Valley and their heads 
in the snow, almost unknown to any save a few 
prospectors, guarded on all sides by the solitudes 
of the desert, seemed utterly desirable to us. 

We sat on a rock studying the map, which was 
no help at all, and eating the big, sweet, Cali- 
fornia prunes of which we always carried pock- 
ets-full as aids to wayfaring. The Worrier 
acquiesced in our mountaineering project, 
though without enthusiasm. He bade us not 
forget that it would be cold up there. The sight 
of the snow had already set him shivering. We 
twitted him with being a "desert rat." 

"You may have got along better than we did 
[172] 



The Mountain Spring 



in Death Valley," we said to him, ''but it's our 
turn now; that's fair." 

The Worrier scorned prunes and always 
looked on with dour superiority during our con- 
sumption of them. Soon he left us and went 
to hunt the "lost mine." There are many 
legends of lost mines in the desert-mountains and 
we paid no especial attention to this one, being 
weary enough to sit still, munching prunes, and 
looking out over the fearful, majestic landscape. 
In an hour he came back with a handful of rocks. 
He laid them solemnly before us. They were 
pieces of gold ore which he had found in a hole 
a little way below the summit. 

"The lost mine," he said. 

"You had better come back and work it," we 
laughed. 

"I'll have them assayed." His manner was 
serious. 

"Why, you don't think " 

"I don't know. But anyways, we'll call it the 
Prune Stone Mine." 

As a matter of fact he did have them assayed 
and did go back with his partner; but the Prune 



White Heart of Mojave 



Stone Mine, like so many mines in the Death 
Valley Country, failed to fulfill its first 
promise. 

During the week that we camped at Emigrant 
Springs we saw no wild life except a few little 
brown birds that made a happy twittering in the 
mornings. Sometimes in the blue night we 
heard the distant howling of coyotes, and once 
an owl mocked us with a cry that sounded ridicu- 
lously like "Hoo, Hoo, Skidoo!" He was a na- 
tive, no doubt, and old in wisdom. In the 
rambles among the mountains we found our first 
wild flowers. They were small except one 
striking crimson-velvet one with a ragged blos- 
som like garden balsam. It grew in clumps 
about six inches high and made vivid spots of 
color against the rocks. Later, as the spring ad- 
vanced, we found a great variety of flowers, but 
never this one except at high altitudes. Seeing 
it was always a joyful heart-beat. The graceful 
greasewood was in bloom, covered with small 
yellow flowers that looked like little butterflies 
perched on the slender branches. The nights 
were still very cold, often freezing the water in 

[■74] 



The Mountain Spring 



the pail, but the days were pleasantly warm. 
The sun shone with such dazzling brightness 
that during the middle of the day the shady sides 
of rocks were the best resting places. A fresh, 
steady wind blew nearly always up or down the 
canyon, sometimes piling great white masses of 
clouds in the sky, always scouring the world in- 
credibly clean. Each night was a blue won- 
der. The mountains were delicate, luminous 
shapes in front of a sky infinitely far away. The 
big stars hung low and burned with a steady, 
silver shine. 

Every day we climbed one or another of the 
ridges and smaller mountains close to the spring. 
It was good to lie on their summits in the sun. 
From any one of them we could look down the 
canyon and see the whole length of the Mes- 
quite Valley, always the same, yet, like Death 
Valley, always different. You can look day 
after day at the deep, hot basins of the desert 
without ever knowing them. Quickly enough 
you can see the obvious features of the Mesquite 
Valley — the continuation of the Panamints on 
the west, the wine-red Grapevine Mountains on 

[175] 



White Heart of Mojave 



the east, the low blue hills in the north, the level 
bottom of the valley streaked with white alkali 
where Salt Creek crosses it and ''Old Johnnie's" 
big sand-dunes are glistening little ant hills — but 
you must stay all the hours of a long day to find 
out what she really is, and then you will not 
know. Listen : 

"Behold me! You think that I am an arid 
valley with a white alkali streak down the 
middle of my level-seeming floor. You 
think that I am surrounded by red moun- 
tains, or perhaps you think they are blue, 
or purple — well, not exactly — more rose. 

"Come down to me! I am very deep be- 
tween the mountains. I am very white. 
But if you do not like me so I can be a wide, 
level plain covered with velvet for you to 
lie on. 

"Come down to mel Rest beside this lake. 
See how it shines, how blue it is! I am all 
in white like a young girl with a turquoise 
breastpin. You don't believe that? I am a 
witch, I can be anything. My wardrobe is 

[176] 



The Mountain Spring 



full of bright dresses. I will put them on 
for you one by one. 

"See, I know more colors of blue than you 
ever dreamed of. When you tire of blue 
I change to ripe plums. Now I throw gray 
gauze over my purple. I look like a nun, 
but am not. Here is my yellow gown. 
You do not like it? See, I have all degrees 
of red, fire red and crimson and pink, the 
color of bride roses. Here is my finest. It 
is made of every color, but the tone of 
it is the gray breast of a dove. You did 
not know that the breast of a dove 
could be made of all colors, but now I show 
you. 

"Do you not love me? You remember too 
well that I am hot as a bake-oven. You 
think that if any one were fool enough to 
come down to me I would steal behind and 
grip him by the throat. 

"What of it? Why do you question me 

so much? You see how old I am, how 

many storms have left their scars on me, 

and you think I am wise. But I am only 

[177] 



White Heart of Mojave 



fair. Is it not enough to be old and yet 
fair? 

"Beauty is sitting on my topmost peak 
making the enchantments that confirm your 
dreams. She experiments with many ma- 
terials; she makes new combinations for- 
ever. 

"Behold all the desolate places how they 
are hers — the lonely hills, the lonely plains, 
the lonely green sea, the lonely sands — she 
clothes us in gorgeous raiment, she makes 
us content with death. Where she is your 
heart can pasture even to the emptiness be- 
between the stars." 



A lifetime is not long enough to listen to the 
songs of the desolate places. A whole sunny, 
timeless day is too short to hear the Mesquite 
Valley. The days and nights of the desert merge 
into each other. They are like perfectly matched 
pearls being strung on an endless string. You 
delight to run your fingers over their smooth 
surfaces and detect no difference. 

[178] 



The Mountain Spring 



"Do we move to-morrow?" Thus the Wor- 
rier. 

"Why to-morrow?" 

"We have been here a week." 

That is not possible 1 How could a week slide 
into past things so soon? 



[179] 



The High White Peaks 

WILD ROSE CANYON has a lovely 
name, justified by a small clump of 
bushes that may bear wild roses some- 
time. The canyon, where it branches east from 
Emigrant Pass, is very narrow with precipitous 
sides. Emigrant Canyon itself at this point is 
walled by high clififs so close together that the 
wagon track fills the gorge. A considerable 
stream, bordered with feathery trees, flows 
through the lower end of Wild Rose Canyon 
and down Emigrant Pass toward the Panamint 
Valley and Ballarat, but dies before it emerges 
from the cliff-like hills onto the long, stony 
slope that leads into the valley. Once more we 
had been deceived. From Pinto Peak the rocky 
cliffs appeared to rise directly out of the Pana- 
mint Valley, but a walk down the western 
descent of Emigrant Pass revealed the same 

[i8o] 



The High White Peaks 



long, brush-covered slope that we had learned 
to know so well. 

The cattlemen had been there and gone away, 
leaving the cattle in Wild Rose for their spring 
range. The young steers huddled together, star- 
ing with their expression of fierce innocence. 
They had tramped the stream-bed into a bog and 
otherwise made camping at the mouth of the 
canyon unpleasant. A stone shack with an iron 
roof was located near the spring. It was rather 
a magnificent shack with two rooms, the inner 
one windowless like a cave. For some reason 
that seems to be the approved way of building 
sleeping-rooms on the desert. At Keane Won- 
der veritable black holes were the sleeping-quar- 
ters near the boarding-house. The shack had 
no floor and the uneven ground was littered with 
rubbish, as indeed were all the surroundings. 
The mess around the spring at Wild Rose both- 
ered us more than the litter anywhere else. Per- 
haps it was because we were shut in on all sides 
by high walls, and there were no vistas nor even 
any beautifully shaped summits to look at. For 
once the desert was all foreground, little trees 

[i8.] 



White Heart of Mojave 



along the stream, little bushes, little stones. A 
tin can in such a small environment can hardly 
be ignored. 

As soon as possible therefore, we pushed on 
up the canyon which widened into what looked 
like a plain surrounded by mountains. In reality 
it was level nowhere, but rounded down like a 
giant oval basin about five miles wide and seven 
or eight miles long. The mountains on the east 
and south were covered with cedars whose van- 
guard dotted the edge of the mesa under Mount 
Baldy, now become a great white mass, very 
near, led up to by a precipitous ridge broken 
into jagged peaks. Telescope Peak lay behind 
Baldy and was not visible. There was more 
snow than we had supposed in our survey from 
Pinto Mountain, it lay all along the jagged ridge, 
coming down in some places almost to the mesa. 
The northern wall of the canyon was composed 
of lower mountains. The one furthest east was 
a big, pointed, red mass, polka-dotted with little 
trees near its summit. Looking back whence 
we had come the mountains seemed to close the 
narrow gorge. 

[182] 



The High White Peaks 



The cattlemen had told us that Wild Rose 
Canyon was full of water, but after we left the 
spring we found none. The big wash down the 
middle was dry — the boy must have seen it on 
some rare occasion when it had water in it — and 
the great bowl far too large and too rough to 
admit of much scouting for springs at the bases 
of the mountains. We had thought that we 
would see the deserted charcoal-kilns and thus 
find the spring which the cattlemen had de- 
scribed, but there was no sign of any kilns. We 
supposed that they were somewhere along the 
bottom of the precipitous ridge that led up to 
Mount Baldy. In that direction the mesa was 
so terribly cut up that we could not attempt to 
take the wagon there until we had first explored 
it, so we made a dry camp in the middle of the 
basin under the shelter of the eight-foot-high 
bank of the wash. 

The wind had blown harder than usual all day 
with an icy bite from the snowy heights. Dur- 
ing the night a racing cloud deposited snow on 
the northern hills which before had been bare. 
A real storm now became our fear, for a little 

[183] 



White Heart of Mojave 



more snow would defeat our project. More- 
over Wild Rose Canyon is at an altitude where 
the cold at that time of year is intense, and we 
had to depend on the sun's fires to warm us 
sufficiently during the day to make life possible 
through the night. The ''desert rat" became a 
bundle of misery. We had not realized the para- 
lyzing effect cold would have on him. He sat 
and shivered, apparently unable to move or to 
think, so utterly wretched that Charlotte and I 
offered to give up the Panamints and "beat it" 
to a more salubrious climate. We could not 
bear to see our friend suffer; but he flatly re- 
fused, angry with us for even making the sug- 
gestion, saying that when he started to do a thing 
he generally did it. 

The next morning was as cold as ever. Still 
the Worrier refused to consider moving out, and 
when the sun had warmed the great windy bowl 
a little, he went back to fetch more water from 
the spring by the old shack. We explored the 
base of the long ridge under Mount Baldy as 
well as we could, but failed to find the charcoal- 
kilns. However, it was possible to get the wagon 

[184] 



The High White Peaks 



over there, so in the afternoon we moved the 
whole outfit up to the first cedar trees. There 
the mesa became so steep that Molly and Bill 
could no longer pull the load. The Worrier 
had brought ten gallons of water, enough for 
several days, and the "desert-proof" horses were 
turned loose to find their way back to the spring 
at the mouth of the canyon. What either they 
or the cattle ate at Wild Rose remained a pro- 
found mystery to us. The mesa was covered 
with low, dry brush, interspersed occasionally 
with bunches of yellow grass. We could see the 
dark backs of the steers like spots moving 
through it, but it looked like anything rather 
than a spring feeding-ground. 

Camp-in-the-Cedars was charming. A real 
tree had become a wonderful object. For once 
there was plenty of wood and the Worrier kept 
himself warm chopping and carrying. After the 
feeble little fires of roots and twigs to which we 
had been accustomed, that blazing, crackling 
camp-fire was a rich luxury. Dinner was a ban- 
quet. Our bed was laid under a big pinon tree 
through whose tufts of fine needles the enormous 

[•85] 



White Heart of Mojave 



stars looked down. We had a glimpse through 
the far-off mouth of the canyon of distant peaks, 
vague in the starlight. The wind rose and fell 
softly through the pines and cedars, like the 
breathing of the great white mountain beneath 
whose side we slept. 

The white dawn of a clear day filtered through 
the blue darkness. Before the sun had climbed 
over the ridge we were started on our long 
anticipated adventure. It began with a stiflf 
scramble up the first buttressing ridge, then a 
long pull to the crest of the barrier that walls 
the southern side of Wild Rose Canyon. The 
steep inclines of gravelly rock were varied with 
ledges. Soon we reached the snow, so hard that 
steps had to be dug in it with much scuffling of 
hobnailed shoes. The green trees growing out of 
the white snow were very lovely, and also useful 
to hold on to. When they were far apart we had 
some exciting moments when we zigzagged over 
the smooth, white crust, which was as steep as a 
shingled roof. In about two hours we reached 
the top of the ridge. Until then we had faced 
the white slope, working too hard to look back 

[1 86] 



The High White Peaks 



very often at the basin that was falling away 
below us. Suddenly we stood on top. The world 
opened beyond into an immense white amphi- 
theater shut in by snowy peaks with the pyramid 
of Telescope, visible once more, at the far side. 
After the hot, dry sands, how miraculous seemed 
this glittering winter! 

We pressed on toward Baldy along the ridge, 
which proved to be much steeper than it had 
looked. It was covered with trees, and great 
patches of snow grown soft now in the sun. 
However, by keeping a little below the crest on 
the southern side most of the snow could be 
avoided. There the ground fell so precipitously 
from the ridge to the canyon below that only an 
occasional tree grew on it, and we had an unim- 
peded view of the two white summits and the 
magnificent sweep of snow between them. 

Noon brought us to a little saddle north of 
Baldy, which connects it with another rounded 
summit of the same name. Here were no trees 
and the snow was blown off clean. With what 
eagerness we panted up the last few yards! The 
mountain climber has his great reward when he 

[187] 



White Heart of Mojave 



''looks over." That is his own peculiar joy. 
He toils for hours with the ground rising before 
him to a ridge that seems to cut the sky, only to 
find a higher one beyond. He surmounts that, 
and another and another, until at last he gains 
the highest and the mountains yield their secret. 
Breathlessly we stood on the little saddle. We 
looked down into Death Valley from the still 
height to which we had looked up so long. The 
white floor shimmered through layers of heated 
air, 10,000 feet below. Again the valley was 
different. That day it was full of sky, as the 
Imperial Valley had been when we first saw it. 
Nothing was distinguishable down there, it was a 
well of clear blue. The Funeral Mountains 
looked like hills. Behind them the jagged 
ranges of desert mountains spread back with one 
tall, snowy peak in their midst, Mount Charles- 
ton, sixty miles away on the border of Nevada. 
Southward on the saddle the mound of Baldy's 
summit presented its snowy side. For the most 
part the snow was hard enough for us to walk 
over the crust, but sometimes we floundered in 
nearly to the waist. That was hard work. By 

[■88] 



The High White Peaks 



one o'clock we reached the top where the snow 
was blown off, leaving bare black rocks. It was 
a quiet day for the desert and especially for the 
mountains. A slight wind came from the south ; 
the sky was cloudless, a deep, still blue. Mount 
Baldy overlooks all the country in a complete 
panorama, save where the beautiful pyramid of 
Telescope Peak cuts into the view. The horizon 
was bounded on three sides by snow mountains, 
Mount Charleston, the San Bernadinos and the 
wonderful Sierra Nevada. Between these white 
barriers spread the desert, deep white valleys, 
yellow dry lakes, ranges of rose and blue and 
dark-violet mountains, all shining in the incom- 
parable brightness of the sun. 

Now, at last, we saw the famous "H. and L." 
of which we had heard so much. "You see the 
highest and the lowest points in the United States 
at the same time," everybody had told us. From 
the top of the Panamints we could see Mount- 
Whitney towering in the west, while in the east 
the mountain sides fall precipitously into Death 
Valley, 280 feet below sea level. There must be 
some more accessible viewpoint which com- 

[189] 



White Heart of Mojave 



mands this dramatic spectacle, for it is not likely 
that our informants expected us to climb Mount 
Baldy. 

From the summit of Baldy the long curving 
arete that had looked so beautiful from Death 
Valley on one side and from Pinto Peak on the 
other led over to Telescope Peak. It was no 
disappointment. Sloping sharply down from 
Baldy, level for a ways, then rising again toward 
the white pyramid, it extended for about three 
miles, precipitous on both sides, often not more 
than ten feet wide on top. The exhilaration of 
walking thus in the clear air high above the 
spread-out world is always a boundless joy; on 
this shining wall in the middle of the desert the 
joy was almost unbearable. The great plain of 
the world was clear cut, no veiling haze softened 
its distances, it flashed and sparkled, full of 
strong, austere lines and strong, satisfying con- 
trasts. Like a victorious lover, you walk the 
heights of your conquest; everything to the great 
circle of the horizon is yours; by right of pa- 
tience and love you possess it. 

If we could only be like the three old cedars 
[190] 



The High White Peaks 



that have withstood the hurricanes on the ridge 
and gaze with them until sunset, through the 
night and the wonder of morning! They are 
so gnarled and old, and so calm. Watchers, they 
stand on the summit of the world, and they might 
tell us, if we could stay, why the mountain-tops 
are joyful. Instead, we must drag around these 
aching bodies clamoring to be kept warm and 
to be fed, never letting us listen long enough. 
Already the sun was descending toward the west, 
and we had to hasten on if we wanted to reach 
Telescope Peak and get back to fire and food 
before the cold of night. 

When the arete began to rise it became rapidly 
very steep. The snow became harder and harder 
until it turned to ice. The lovely pyramid, now 
directly overhead, shone blindingly in the slant- 
ing sun. The only possible way to its peak was 
up a sharp knife-edge, from which both sides fell 
sheer for thousands of feet. Was it all solid ice? 
The conviction that it was had been hinting 
defeat to each of us for the last half hour of the 
climb, but no one cared to speak of that possi- 
bility until we were within four hundred feet 

[191] 



White Heart of Mojave 



of the top, clinging to trees and slipping badly. 
The peak rose at a possible, but terrific angle; 
the trees for the remainder of the way were much 
too far apart to hold on to ; the ice was perfectly 
smooth, and glistened like a skating rink set on 
edge. No amount of kicking with hobnailed 
shoes could make a foothold on it, and one slip 
on that knife-edge either way meant a slide down 
the ice-sheet to almost sure destruction. You 
cannot climb such an ice wall without either an 
ax or a rope; with either one we would have 
tried it. We could have cut steps with an ax, or 
we might have been able to lasso the trees above 
with a long rope, and pull ourselves up by it. 
So lately come from the furnace of Death Val- 
ley, how should we suppose that we would need 
the implements of an Alpine mountain-climber? 
Down, down, more than ii,ooo feet, lay that 
white pit veiled with the smoke of iridescent 
haze. 

The Worrier, who professed deep scorn of all 
mountains for their own sakes, looked longingly 
at the smooth peak. It fascinated us all like a 
hard, glittering jewel. He said he "hated to be 

[192] 



The High White Peaks 



beat." So did we all "hate to be beat," but we 
would have been ungrateful indeed for the joy 
of that day had we not been able to turn back 
and remain thankful. There was no sense of 
defeat in the going-down. 

The descent was easy except for the heart- 
breaking pull up Mount Baldy again. His sides 
were far too straight up and down to admit of 
any going around him. On the summit we made 
a concession to aching bodies by taking a long 
rest and eating what was left of the bread and 
cheese and the everlasting prunes. The Worrier 
had long since dubbed our route "The Prune 
Stone Trail." We jested light-heartedly about 
building cairns along it with a prune stone 
carved on the top of each, and insisted that we 
owned a half interest in the Prune Stone Mine, 
as he would never have found it had we not 
dragged him up Pinto. Mountain-hater as he 
was and heat-loving "desert-rat," he genially ad- 
mitted that, snow or no snow, the top of Baldy 
was "fine." As we sat there Death Valley turned 
a dark, deep, luminous blue. We could see the 
Avawatz Mountains by Silver Lake and the 

[193] 



White Heart of Mojave 



notch in the hills where the blue pool of Sara- 
toga cherishes its little darting fish. The slant- 
ing sunlight was resplendent on the arete and 
the west slopes of Telescope Peak. The Worrier 
called him an old rascal; but we were glad to 
leave him so, with his white robes unsullied by 
scrambling feet. His image would remain al- 
ways to the inward eye in dull days and difficult 
days, a reminder of how beauty watches around 
the world. 

When the sun stood just above the wall of the 
Sierras we began the long descent down the 
rounded, snowy side of Baldy to the little saddle, 
and down the long, steep slope and the little, but- 
tress slope where the cedar trees had been so 
lovely in the snow. Night came while we were 
still going down, and the basin of Wild Rose 
Canyon was a violet lake. 



[194] 




XI 

Snowstorm and Sandstorm 

REAKFAST was late next morning like 
Sunday breakfasts in houses. Charlotte 
asked if it was Sunday. No one knew 
what day it was in the f ar-ofif world, but we pro- 
claimed it Sunday at Wild Rose. It was a true 
Sunday, a day of rest after hard exertion, a still 
day washed clean by the mighty sun. Immense 
and still. The great bowl curved tranquilly to 
the tranquil hills, the cedars and pinons along 
its edge glistened like little bright fingers point- 
ing at the sky. 

During the middle of the day the sun was hot, 
in the morning and the evening the big fire 
blazed. Camp-in-the-Cedars was lovely enough 
to stay in forever, but shortly after noon the Wor- 
rier announced that he must find the charcoal- 
kilns, he could not "be beat" by them. The little 
trees were so beguiling, the tranquil brightness 

[195] 



White Heart of Mojave 



of the mesa so inviting, that we followed him, 
buoyed up by the cold, clear air. We wandered 
along the base of Baldy to where a small, purple 
mountain jutted into the great basin. Around 
that we went, leisurely picking our way over the 
rough ground until at the extreme northern end 
of the bowl we found an attenuated wraith of a 
road leading up into a heavily wooded canyon. 
A road must once have been the way to some- 
where, and we followed it, climbing steeply for 
nearly a mile. It brought us to a small, level 
spot where, made of rocks like the mountains 
and indistinguishable until we were right on 
them, stood seven immense charcoal-kilns like 
a row of giant beehives. They were so big that 
we could walk upright through their doorways, 
that looked like arched openings in their sides. 
Old Tom Adams had said that they were used 
in the seventies to make fuel of the cedars and 
pifions, to be hauled thirty miles to the smelter 
at a lead mine. They had been deserted so long 
that the camp rubbish had disappeared from 
around them and they merged into their back- 
ground, become again a part of Nature herself. 

[196] 



Snowstorm and Sandstorm 



What strenuous endeavor they denoted 1 
Everywhere men have left their footprints on 
the Mojave, sojourners always, never inhab- 
itants. The seven kilns w^ere the most impres- 
sive testimony of brief possession that we saw, 
more impressive even than the twenty-eight- 
mile-long trench that brought the water to 
Skidoo. We had seen it from there cross- 
ing high ridges; in the great bowl of Wild 
Rose it was clearly marked, going from side to 
side and vanishing up the first ridge which we 
had climbed to Baldy. The cost and labor of 
making it must have been immense. Mojave 
was already breaking down the edges preparing 
to brush it away, but it will be a long time 
before she can obliterate those kilns. They 
will still be eloquent in that remote fastness 
long after Keane Wonder and Ryolite are 
gone. 

Behind the kilns a dim path climbed the moun- 
tain-side to a little, secret spring, an oval rock 
basin not more than five feet long and so deftly 
hidden that we wondered what prospector first 
had the joy of finding it. From the elevation of 

[197] 



White Heart of Mojave 



the spring we could look along the length of 
Wild Rose Canyon, where the sagebrush 
smoothed to a blue and green and purple sea, 
and through its narrow opening to the white 
serenity of Mount Whitney. Thus framed the 
white peak seemed to float in the blue sky. Very 
swiftly Mojave brushes men off, but always with 
a fine gesture. From the midst of her most 
obliterating desolations she never fails to point 
at some far-off shining. 

Too late we learned that the little spring at 
the head of the canyon would have been the 
place for our camp. Not only would we have 
had the delight of its cold, pure water, but the 
ascent of Mount Baldy looked shorter and easier 
from there. Perhaps we each cherished the hope 
of moving up next day and trying once more to 
scale the glittering ice-wall with the help of 
our wood-chopper's ax and the rope from the 
wagon ; but we never discussed the idea for that 
night the dreaded storm crept over the moun- 
tains. It came stealthily on padded feet, putting 
out the stars. At dawn big wet snowflakes gently 
sifting through the still air awoke us. 

[198] 



Snowstorm and Sandstorm 

During the day the storm Increased. The 
wind arose and blew in gusts seemingly from 
every direction. Fortunately the trees afforded 
plenty of big wood, so we were able to keep a 
roaring fire, though the heavily-falling, wet 
snow sometimes threatened to put it out. It 
snowed so fast that we were shut in by white 
walls not more than twenty feet away. We 
pitched our tent with the opening toward the 
fire and tried to get some shelter in it while the 
Worrier hunted the horses. The tent was the 
only serious mistake in the outfit. It was a light, 
waterproof silk tent with a pole up the middle. 
We had expected to use it as a shelter from the 
wind and had tried once before at Emigrant 
Springs. On that occasion its light-weight ma- 
terial had flapped and rattled in the blast until 
we were glad to creep outside and sleep under 
the edge of a rock. Before morning it blew 
down. The only practical tent for the desert is 
a very low one, like a pup-tent, made of heavy 
canvas, with extra long pegs that must be driven 
deep and buried in the sand. During the eter- 
nity of snowstorm in which Charlotte and I 

[199] 



White Heart of Mojave 



waited for Molly and Bill, we alternated be- 
tween holding up the pole in the gusts of wind 
and rushing out between them to drive in the 
pegs with the ax. This, and the necessity of 
constantly building up the fire, kept us wet and 
cold all day, for the snow was not the dry, whirl- 
ing snow of really cold climates, but was as wet 
as a heavy rain. It clung so we could not shake 
it off and melted on our clothes. The Worrier 
did not retrieve Molly and Bill until four 
o'clock. It was late to move, but the storm 
showed no sign of abatement and we remem- 
bered with growing affection the shack at the 
entrance to the canyon. Hastily packing in the 
white downpour that hissed through the air, we 
left Camp-in-the-Cedars. 

As soon as we had descended a little way into 
the basin the snow ceased, but a white cloud con- 
tinued to hang over the place where our charm- 
ing camp had been. During the remainder of 
the day and throughout the night heavy clouds 
veiled all the mountains, occasionally dropping 
flurries of snow around us. An icy wind rushed 
down the canyon. When we reached the shack 

[200] 



Snowstorm and Sandstorm 



it seemed palatial. We cleared out the rubbish 
by throwing it down the hill in front of the door, 
the approved way of cleaning up on the desert. 
When there are too many cans you throw them 
behind the bushes, and we had learned to do it 
with great vigor and accuracy of aim. Much 
to the Worrier's amusement we scrubbed the 
table and tried to wipe ofif the cracked, rusty 
stove set up on three empty gasoline tins. That 
stove was a marvel in the art of consuming much 
fuel without emitting any heat. We took turns 
huddling close to it. The walls sheltered us 
from the wind, but as far as the stove was con- 
cerned we might almost as well have been out- 
doors. 

After supper we had to reckon with the dun- 
geon that was the bedroom. The Worrier rec- 
ommended it highly, but we viewed it with a 
certain awful apprehension. We had a devil's 
choice between that and the frigid outdoors that 
kept beating on the shack with gusts of wind. 
We made the mistake of choosing the dungeon. 
When the candle was blown out fear crouched in 
the blackness. All the tales we had ever read of 

[201] 



White Heart of Mojave 



prisoners in damp cellars assailed us — horrors, 
tortures, black holes. The terrors of these man- 
made fears in this shut-in, man-made place were 
far worse than the wild outdoors. Presently 
little scratchings and gnawings apprised us that 
we were not alone. Unbearable then was the 
walled darkness. We gathered up the bed and 
went outside, stepping carefully over the Wor- 
rier who, forever faithful, was sleeping across 
the door. 

The clean outdoors! Let it snow, let it hail, 
let the water run down the mountain and seep 
through the bed, let the wind tear at the pon- 
chos! It was nothing compared to being shut 
up in a dark place. About midnight we were 
suddenly struck awake by a terrific din. After 
the first tense moment we recognized it as coy- 
otes howling in the canyon. That was nothing 
either compared to vague little scratchings and 
gnawings in an eight-by-ten shack. 

Next day the storm continued, with clear 
intervals during which we rushed out to spread 
our clothes and blankets in the sun that thirstily 
drank up the snow at the bases of the mountains. 

[202] 



Snowstorm and Sandstorm 



"Scotty" beguiled the hours and the weird tales 
of Lord Dunsany, read aloud beside the cracked 
stove, never had a more appropriate setting. All 
around the mountains were white except where 
some insistently black rock heaved out. Clouds 
hurried across the sky like Indians galloping on 
the war-path, the wind screaming around the 
rocks was their war-whoop. In the moments of 
peace between their raids huge giants of cloud 
shook their fists at us over the walls. The silence 
of Mojave was torn to tatters. Yet, somehow, 
we still felt it. Just as the wild tales we read 
intimated a stillness behind, so the tumult was a 
ripple on indomitable peace. You have seen a 
little whirlwind plow a furrow through the 
water of some glassy lake, making quite a bit of 
a tumult, but leaving undisturbed the tranquil- 
lity of the surface beyond its narrow path. 
Though between the walls of the canyon where 
we camped we could not see the still surfaces, 
we sensed them. The storm was an incident. 
Mojave took it and made a strong song. 

Wild Rose Canyon was the furthest point of 
our journey; from the old shack the going home 

[203] 



White Heart of Mojave 



began. The sun rose brilliantly on the follow- 
ing morning and deceived us into starting back 
to Emigrant Springs. As soon as we had 
left the narrow canyon and could once more see 
the expanse of the sky, we knew that the storm 
was by no means over. We even debated return- 
ing to our palace, cracked stove, black hole, and 
all ; but when you have broken camp, found the 
horses, packed up, and started, a two-hour-long 
process, you will risk almost anything rather 
than turn back. There were compensations, too, 
even for the wind which shortly came to life 
again and thrust its knife to our hearts. The 
sky was a magnificent spectacle. It was not 
gray, nor overcast, nor brooding, but full of 
torn-up, piled-up, tumultuous clouds, a fitting 
canopy for the country beneath it. The 
top of Emigrant Pass is a big mesa sur- 
rounded by all kinds of mountains from the 
broken, battered buttresses and steep snow- 
peaks of the Panamints to smooth, bare, rounded 
hills folded over each other and dimpled like 
upholstered sofas. In bursts of sunshine the 
shadows of the clouds raced over them all, 

[204] 



Snowstorm and Sandstorm 

snatching at each other and getting mixed up in 
the canyons. Sometimes a cloud spilled out its 
contents and for a while obliterated one of them. 
Toward noon the clouds made a concerted attack 
on the sun, calling up new cohorts until at last 
they succeeded in covering him entirely and 
keeping him covered. Then a great change fell 
upon Mojave. She became forlorn, her bright 
colors faded into gray. The brush shivered in 
the wind and made a cold, crackling sound. A 
few immense Joshua palms scattered over the 
mesa waved their grotesque arms like monsters 
in pain. The wind whistled through their stiff, 
spiky leaves. They were in bloom with a heavy 
mass of waxy white flowers on the end of each 
branch. The sun had polished the flowers, tip- 
ping every branch with a silver ball ; now they 
stuck up into the lead-colored sky, dull, lead- 
colored things. 

All the familiar places that had been drenched 
with sunshine, brilliant with color, almost as 
magical sometimes as the burning sands them- 
selves, now appeared in this sad, gray mood. 
After leaving the top of the pass we crossed a 

[205] 



White Heart of Mojave 



largCj/high plateau known as the Harrisburg 
Flat/ On the way over to Wild Rose it had been 
still and hot, the openings between the moun- 
tains had hinted at the illusions of Death Valley 
behind them ; now a cloud full of wind and snow 
rolled up out of the narrow opening of Emigrant 
Canyon. Storms were all around us, but until 
that moment we had hoped that we might 
escape. There was no escape. The Har- 
risburg Flat became a white, whirling fury. 
The wind that smote us was like a solid, 
moving wall. The cloud was not made of snow, 
but of ice, a fine hail that cut our faces. It was 
so dense that we could not see ten feet in front 
of the wagon. We had some difficulty in making 
Molly and Bill face it, but it was necessary to 
go on. All day the icy wind had been pressing 
upon us, now it was so cold that we felt we 
could not withstand it long. Fortunately the 
sheltering walls of the canyon were not far, but 
the half hour during which we struggled toward 
them seemed an eternit)^/ The Worrier shouted 
at the laboring horses and for the first time when 
he knew that we could hear him, he cursed. 

[206] 



Snowstorm and Sandstorm 

By the time we reached the canyon the hail 
had stopped but the terrible wind continued. It 
seemed as though it would rip the bushes out of 
the ground. In place of the ice, fine particles of 
sand assailed us — had the wash not been thor- 
oughly wet we would have had more of it. It 
must have rained violently in the canyon, or else 
in the dusk we missed the particular route among 
the rocks by which we had come up, for the way 
was so washed out that the Worrier could hardly 
pilot the load. 

Every bit of energy we had was centered on 
reaching the ruined shack at Emigrant Springs. 
When we were able to say anything at all 
we speculated about how dirty it might be 
and whether or not there was a stove in it. The 
dirt was a certainty, but nobody could remem- 
ber about the stove, as we had avoided the 
shack when we were there before. After a 
freezing eternity we came around the last bend 
of the canyon. Home was in sight, and our 
hope perished for smoke was coming out of 
the chimney! Not only was there a stove, but 
there was a man snugly camping beside it, an 

[207] 



White Heart of Mojave 



unknown man, a usurper, a robber! We were 
full of angry, helpless indignation. 

"If it's Tom Adams," the Worrier snapped, 
''we'll throw him out." 

But it was not Tom Adams. It was another 
old-timer, an old man, who wandered cease- 
lessly to and fro over the desert. He was a gentle 
soul, but we were in no mood to appreciate that 
then. Of course he offered to move out of the 
shack when he saw "ladies" coming on such a 
bitter night, and equally of course we could not 
allow it. If Charlotte and I chose to invade 
the wilderness we must take the chances of the 
wilderness as other people did. Our pride was 
involved, but we had to refuse very summarily, 
even rudely, before the old man would accept 
our objection. Then he retired into the shack 
with hurt dignity, while we pulled down some 
more of the corral fence to make a blazing fire. 
We solaced ourselves with the belief that the 
outdoors was better than the shack anjrway, as 
it had been better than the black hole. In the 
course of time we were warm again and man- 
aged to keep warm through the night. 

[208] 



Snowstorm and Sandstorm 



In the morning the innocent usurper sent us, 
via the Worrier, a pan of hot biscuits, a most 
welcome and delicious gift. Charlotte and I 
called on him later to thank him and make 
amends if we could. He entertained us for two 
hours with the story of his travels, but he would 
not accept our invitation to dinner, saying that 
he wasn't used to "dining with ladies." We sin- 
cerely hope it was not a sarcasm. The question 
which the possession of the shack raised is rather 
a difficult one. Was our pride worth more than 
the true chivalry of a kindly soul? To us it was, 
to him it was not. 

The wind continued to blow with violence for 
several days, though we had no more rain nor 
snow. It is easy to see how the desert has been 
torn to its rough harshness. That steady-blow- 
ing wind alone could wear the mountains to their 
jagged outlines, crumbling the softer rock down 
to fill the valleys. It picks up the sand and uses 
it to grind the mountains smooth. It piles it 
against the cliffs to make new foothills and hol- 
lows it out to make new canyons. It drives the 
rain against the mountains to rush down, rolling 

[209] 



White Heart of Mojave 



rocks along the gorges and digging the deep 
trenches across the mesas. Where no network of 
roots holds a surface soil wind and rain work 
rapidly. On the homeward journey from Wild 
Rose we understood the cut-up mesas and the 
gouged-out canyons better. 

Down in the Mesquite Valley, where we took 
the sandy road along the edge of the marsh in- 
stead of the rocky one by which we had come 
because Bill had lost a shoe, we saw what the 
wind can do with sand. In the afternoon we 
reached the foot of the mesa that leads from 
Emigrant Canyon to the bottom of the valley 
and were at the beginning of "Old Johnnie's" 
sand-dunes. It had been a sparkling day with a 
clear sky, but the wind was still blowing. The 
Mesquite Valley was as hot as we remembered 
it, but, after the ice-cloud on the Harrisburg 
Flat only two days before, it seemed a delicious 
hotness. With the assurance of seasoned trav- 
elers able to make a dry camp an)rwhere, Char- 
lotte and I insisted on stopping there for the 
night. Molly and Bill would take four hours to 
make the nine miles of deep sand to Salt Creek, 

[210] 



Snowstorm and Sandstorm 



and we always hated to make camp in the dark. 
The Worrier wanted to go on. He said he had a 
hunch that we ought to, but he allowed himself 
to be persuaded. We should have heeded that 
hunch of an old-timer. 

Hardly had we unpacked the wagon and made 
a fireplace before we noticed that the wind was 
increasing. Little whirligigs of sand began to 
run across the valley. Soon they were charging 
at us down the mesa. First they came singly, 
then merged into a cloud of sand that rattled 
against the pots and the wagon. Luckily for us 
the wind was blowing from the mountains over 
the mesa where there was comparatively little 
sand to pick up, for had it been coming across 
the dunes we would have been buried alive. Of 
course it was impossible to cook; in a very few 
minutes it was impossible to do anything but 
crouch in the lea of the sand-heap around the 
roots of the biggest mesquite. The Worrier 
seemed to shrink up and draw in his head like a 
turtle. He shouted something at us, of which 
we could only hear the word "hunch." The air 
was full of a rushing, hissing sound. 

[211] 



White Heart of Mojave 



Charlotte and I covered ourselves v^^ith the 
ponchos, drawing them over our heads when 
the sand came hurtling through the top of the 
Mesquite. Molly and Bill huddled close to- 
gether about fifty feet away with their backs to 
the blast, and much of the time the sand was 
so dense that we could not see them. The Wor- 
rier also was lost in the yellow cloud. The sand 
was very fine and, in spite of the ponchos, sifted 
into our hair and ears and clothes. It gritted in 
our teeth so we felt as though we were eating it. 
We could see it piling up around the next mes- 
quite, and could imagine it whirling through the 
valley over the tops of "Old Johnnie's" dunes. 

Often the wind goes down at sunset, but that 
day the sun sank invisibly and the fury increased. 
We felt a queer excitement not unmixed with 
fear. Thus, only a hundred times worse, must 
the sand blow over the vast Sahara Desert while 
the Arabs cover their heads, calling on Allah. 
When the solid ground itself arises there is no 
help but Allah. 

After sunset the Worrier emerged again from 
the flying yellow mass. His shirt was blown 

[212] 



Snowstorm and Sandstorm 



tight to him and the loose sleeves whipped in 
the wind. He leaned against it bending forward. 
He shouted that we might possibly get some 
shelter by continuing along the road toward Salt 
Creek, where it winds further around the side 
of Sheep Mountain. He advised us to move, 
because if the storm continued he could not keep 
Molly and Bill. 

"Tie them up!" we yelled. 

"Can't. Go crazy." Then, as we did not 
move, his voice rose peremptorily: 

"Come on! If it gets worse we can't go." 

We had disregarded his first hunch; now, if 
he had another, far be it from us to raise diffi- 
culties, though we could hardly see how it was 
possible to travel even then. Charlotte and I 
staggered up from the mesquite and all three of 
us packed as speedily as we could. It was a 
disorderly packing, as we could scarcely stand 
before the wind, and were almost blinded by the 
sand. Molly and Bill were wild with excite- 
ment. I remember vividly bracing myself 
against the wall of wind, holding on to Molly, 
who objected to backing around to the wagon- 

[213] 



White Heart of Mojave 



pole, unable to open my eyes and hardly able to 
breathe. 

We all piled into the wagon. The excited 
horses were willing to travel with their backs to 
the wind. There was a track to follow, but its 
edges were already rounding full of sand. If 
the storm should continue long enough it would 
be smoothed out. 

The Worrier's hope was justified, for at the 
end of three or four miles the wind seemed much 
less furious. We were among the dunes and 
found a fairly quiet little gully full of deep sand 
as fine and soft as the sand on a beach. Some- 
thing in the set of the wind through the moun- 
tains left this oasis of peace. We were even able 
to cook the long-delayed dinner. We did it by 
moonlight, slowly and carefully handling things 
and keeping them covered as much as possible, 
like having a picnic on a windy seashore. 

The Worrier suggested that we climb to the 
top of the dune which partially sheltered us, if 
we wanted to see what a sandstorm looked like. 
We did so. From that vantage point of com- 
parative calm we saw the whole Mesquite Val- 

[214] 



Snowstorm and Sandstorm 



ley filled with a dense yellow cloud that com- 
pletely shut out the surrounding mountains, ris- 
ing higher than they, swirling at the top like 
smoke ascending into the dark night sky. 

In the morning we climbed the dune again 
and looked across over the others. The blowing 
sand was less dense and we could see them all. 
"Old Johnnie" had been right, they were a hun- 
dred feet high. Their shapes were very beau- 
tiful, with knife-edge tops ridged in pure, clean 
lines from which fringes of fine sand blew up 
like the wind-tossed manes of white horses. The 
masses and outlines of the dunes suggested Egyp- 
tian architecture; the pyramids and the crouch- 
ing sphinx were there. Sand dunes must have 
been familiar to the Egyptians dwelling beside 
the Sahara. What is the huge sphinx, brooding 
and massive, gazing with strong eyes across the 
emptiness, but an interpretation of the desert 
carved in stone? 

We reached Salt Creek early and spent the. 
rest of the day there. The wind continued to 
blow, the sand still swirled of? the dunes, and 
the yellow dust-cloud still obscured the moun- 

[215] 



White Heart of Mojave 



tains; but we were in the shelter of Tucki and 
the ground was so stony that we were not much 
troubled by the migrating sand. Once more 
Charlotte and I climbed the ridge from which 
we had watched the Worrier's remarkable hunt- 
ing. The whole big basin of Death Valley be- 
tween its high walls of rock was blurred with 
dust, clouds of sand with wind-frayed edges rose 
into the sky, not a gleam of radiance showed 
through. The green and white snake of Salt 
Creek coiled sullenly among the sulphur-colored 
hills. Only the blue eye was bright, poisonous, 
unwinking. The fair water that was too pol- 
luted for human drinking seemed to mock us. 
We waited for the enchanter to come at sunset, 
but as the day merged into evening the scene be- 
came inexpressibly dreadful. 

Suddenly Charlotte arose from the rock on 
which we were sitting. 

''Let us go," she whispered, and without fur- 
ther comment we hurried back to camp and 
made the Worrier collect enough wood from the 
swamp for a truly cheerful fire. 

The following day we traveled once more up 

[216] 



Snowstorm and Sandstorm 



the long, northern mesa of Death Valley, but by 
a different route from that by which we had 
descended. This way was shorter, avoiding the 
long pull across the valley, though it was rockier, 
steeper, and cut by more islands of hills to cross 
or go around than the other. In many places 
the road vanished utterly, and only a "desert- 
rat" could have piloted a wagon safely to its des- 
tination over that maze of ridges and gullies. 

The day was fine. At last the wind had died 
down and the dust-clouds were slowly subsiding. 
Both Death Valley and the Mesquite Valley 
were veiled in heavy haze, but the brightness of 
their changing color now shimmered through. 
All day the white blaze of the sun was around 
us and the silence, after a week of tumultuous 
wind, was a mighty dreaming. It was the living 
silence which we had first known on the night 
when we wandered away from Silver Lake, the 
silence in which the earth moves. The moun- 
tains dwelt in it majestically. Mojave was 
again making her fine gesture, unconscious of 
the discomforts and terrors of small living things. 
Her pointing at the far-off shining is always a 

[217] 



White Heart of Mojave 



conquest of grimness, as though sorrow were a 
stepping-stone to beauty. 

By the out-jutting cliff of Daylight Pass, from 
which we had first beheld Death Valley, we 
made a long stop. Familiarity had only en- 
hanced its splendor. With different eyes we saw 
the shining floor, the sad Funeral Mountains, 
the calm, white curves of the high Panamints. 
What had been a picture was now a living ex- 
perience. The rose and silver shifting over the' 
white valley-floor had new meaning. We^ 
knew that floor, we knew the feel of it, and 
its ever-changing beauty was a miracle. We 
were justified in the pilgrimage, for only by 
going thus to the White Heart, making stones 
and brush and jagged rocks our companions, de- 
pending on the springs to keep us alive and the 
roots of the greasewood to warm us, could we 
have known what a miracle it was. The words 
"terror" and "beauty" which we had spoken dur- 
ing the first look down into the valley and had 
thought that we understood, had real content 
now. We knew that they belonged together and 
that one covered the other and changed its 
meaning. 

[218] 



XII 

The End of the Adventure 

IT was April when we returned to Silver 
Lake. Spring was walking on the desert. 
The sand and the stony mesas were decked 
with flowers. Great patches of California-pop- 
pies bent on hairlike, invisible stems before the 
wind, little floating golden cups. Blue lupins, 
like spires of larkspur, glistened in the sun. A 
four-petaled, waxy flower with a shining, satiny 
texture spread in masses on the sand. Daisies 
with yellow centers and lavender petals clustered 
beside rocks. A little plant like the beginnings 
of a wild rose tossed tiny pink balloons in the 
air. The shoots of the purple verbena ran over 
the ground, sending up little stems to hold its 
many-floretted crowns. Even the thorny cactus 
bloomed with a crimson, poppy-shaped flower. 
When we went on excursions to the mountains 
the bayonet-leaves of the yucca guarded tall 

[219] 



White Heart of Mojave 



spikes which bore aloft white, shining blos- 
soms, and the grotesque branches of the Joshua 
palms were tipped with brightness like lighted 
candles. Everj^vhere high clumps of yellow 
coreopsis rivaled the sun. Beyond the dry lake 
at the base of the sand-ridge which had been so 
terrifying on our first drive through the desert 
stood stately Easter lilies hung with great white 
bells. Easter morning we went over there and 
gathered armfuls for our kind German hosts. 
Their house and ours were abloom during our 
stay, for we could no more resist gathering these 
amazing flowers than we could resist picking up 
the many-colored stones. Every dish and bowl 
was full and tin cans rescued from the dump 
were promoted to be vases. 

The gallant little flowers in such a stern envi- 
ronment! They were touchingly lovely, bloom- 
ing wherever they had the smallest chance and 
looking trustingly at the sun. It was as though 
we had never seen flowers before, never really 
seen them. 

Indeed, until we went on pilgrimage to the 
White Heart, we had never seen the outdoors, 

[220] 



The End of the Adventure 

never really seen it. How could we not see it 
when the outdoors is always on the doorstep? 
We had thought we saw it, we had talked about 
it, a place for pleasant dalliance when work in- 
side the walls was done, or a sort of glorified 
gymnasium to make the blood race and the heart 
beat faster. The outdoors is the awe-full, mag- 
nificent universe moving along, inexpressibly 
fearful and beautiful! 

And we might have seen it anywhere! The 
drama is always going on with its terror and 
beauty. The gentlest countryside is a part of it. 
Everywhere the grim touches hands with the 
fair, storm alternates with calm, flowers grow 
out of death, and the fairness, the calm and the 
flowers are the stronger. Poets and artists know 
this when they step across their thresholds in 
the morning — whence their unreasonable joy at 
being alive — but most of us have to be shaken 
awake before we can see what is in front of our 
eyes. 

The desert shook us awake. We had come 
looking for mysteries and "terrible fascinations" 
and found only the mystery of the old outdoors 

[221] 



White Heart of Mojave 



and the terrible fascination of the old outdoors. 
Beauty pressing around sorrow — the desert is 
simply a very forceful statement about that. 

For the adventure with the outdoors is the 
adventure with beauty. And when you have that 
adventure the jealous walls, however engrossing 
their contents, and they may be very interesting 
and amusing and serious and exciting, can 
never bully you again. They have doors and 
windows in them and beauty is around them like 
a garment. You and I, unaccountably split off 
from the vast drama and blessedly able to be 
aware of it for a little while, shall we let the din 
and bother inside the walls, the frantic lunging 
at the still face of time, raise such a dust in our 
eyes that we cannot see? 

''Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all 
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know." 

Every day while we rested at Silver Lake we 
looked the length of the barren lake bed to the 
bright mirage at the base of the black mountain 
that was no mountain at all, and northward over 
sandy emptiness to the enchanted pathway lead- 

[222] 



The End of the Adventure 

ing behind the Avawatz. Fourteen of the still, 
bright days of the desert were strung on the end- 
less string before we had to say good-by to our 
hosts and to the Worrier. 

Never can we forget any of the people whom 
we met during our adventure with the outdoors, 
neither the few whom we have mentioned in this 
inadequate telling of it, nor the many whom we 
have not. They were all unfailingly kind. It 
was very hard to part from our guide, and noth- 
ing reconciled us to it except his cheerful prom- 
ise to act as Official Worrier again. Our host- 
ess invited us to come any time and stay as long 
as we liked, an invitation of which we have 
gladly availed ourselves. 

We piled our baggage into the automobile, 
abandoned so long at Silver Lake, and through 
a whole sunny day drove away from the White 
Heart. The dim road led past sinister little 
craters that long ago spilled ugly, black lava 
over the hills, through acres and acres of blue 
lupins blown to waves like a sea, across two 
ranges of enchanted mountains arxd down into 
and over the white Ivanpah Valley where the 

[223] 



White Heart of Mojave 



heavy sand made the engine boil. Several times 
we left the car to w^alk on the savage, torn-up 
hills made gentle by flowers. When the noise 
of the engine w^as hushed the silence was full of 
the singing of birds. 

In the rose and orange of evening we reached 
Needles on the bank of the red Colorado River, 
and came out of the wild and lonely place onto 
the great highway that joins the Atlantic and 
the Pacific. The sand and rock trail follows 
the steel road of the Santa Fe . Transcontinental 
trains roar past and pennants flutter on automo- 
biles from Maine and Florida, Michigan and 
Texas, Oregon and California. Dust clouds 
roll over the edge of Mojave as America goes 
by. Some travelers look at her curiously, some 
look longingly, some shudder, some pass with 
the window shades pulled down. All the time 
she is singing on her rosy mountain-tops and in 
her deep, hot valleys where the blaze of the sun 
is white. 



[224] 



APPENDIX 

". . . That part of California which lies to the 
south and east of the southern inosculation of the 
Coast Range and the Sierra comprises an area of 
fully 50,000 sq.m. For the most part it is exces- 
sively dry and barren. The Mohave Desert — em- 
bracing Kern, Los Angeles and San Bernardino, as 
also a large part of San Diego, Imperial and River- 
side counties — belong to the 'Great Basin.' . . . 
The Mohave Desert is about 2,000 ft. above the 
sea in general altitude. The southern part of the 
Great Basin region is vaguely designated the Colo- 
rado desert. In San Diego, Imperial and Riverside 
counties a number of creeks or so called rivers, with 
beds that are normally dry, flow centrally toward 
the desert of Salton Sink or 'Sea' ; this is the lowest 
part of a large area that is depressed below the 
level of the sea, at Salton 263 ft., and 287 ft. at 
the lowest point. In 1900 the Colorado River 
(q.v. ) was tapped south of the Mexican boundary 
for water wherewith to irrigate land in the Imperial 
Valley along the Southern Pacific Railway, adjoin- 

[225] 



White Heart of Mojave 



ing Salton Sea. The river enlarged the Canal, and 
finding a steeper gradient than that to its mouth, 
was diverted into the Colorado Desert, flooding 
Salton Sea, and when the break in this river was 
closed for the second time in February, 1907, 
though much of its water still escaped through 
minor channels and by seepage, a lake more than 
400 sq.m. in area was left. A permanent 60 ft. 
masonry dam was completed in July, 1907. 

". . . Death Valley surpasses for combined heat 
and aridity any meteorological stations on earth 
where regular observations are taken, although for 
extremes of heat it is exceeded by places in the 
Colorado desert. The minimum daily temperature 
in summer is rarely below 70° F. and often above 
96° F. (in the shade), while the maximum may for 
days in succession be as high as 120° F. A record 
of six months ( 1891 ) showed an average daily rela- 
tive humidity sometimes falls to 5. Yet the sur- 
rounding country is not devoid of vegetation. The 
hills are very fertile when irrigated, and the wet 
season develops a variety of perennial herbs, shrubs 
and annuals." 

The Encyclopaedia Britannica: "California." 
"It is often said that America has no real des- 
erts. This is true in the sense that there are no 

[226] 



Appendix 

regions such as are found in Asia and Africa where 
one can travel a hundred miles at a stretch and 
scarcely see a sign of vegetation — nothing but barren 
gravel, graceful, wavy sand dunes, hard, wind-swept 
clay, or still harder rock salt broken into rough 
blocks with upturned edges. In the broader sense 
of the term, however, America has an abundance of 
deserts — regions which bear a thin cover of bushy 
vegetation but are too dry for agriculture without 
irrigation. ... In the United States the deserts 
lie almost wholly between the Sierra Nevada and 
the Rocky Mountain ranges, which keep out any 
moisture that might come from either the west or 
the east. Beginning on the north with the sage- 
brush plateau of southern Washington, the desert 
expands to a width of seven hundred miles in the 
gray, sage-covered basins of Nevada and Utah. In 
southern California and Arizona the sagebrush 
gives place to smaller forms like the salt-bush, and 
the desert assumes a sterner aspect. Next comes 
the cactus desert extending from Arizona far south 
into Mexico. One of the notable features of the 
desert is the extreme heat of certain portions. Close 
to the Nevada border in southern California, Death 
Valley, 250 feet below sea-level, is the hottest place 
in America. There alone among the American 

[227] 



White Heart of Mojave 



regions familiar to the writer does one have the 
feeling of intense, overpowering aridity which pre- 
vails so often in the deserts of Arabia and Central 
Asia. Some years ago a Weather Bureau ther- 
mometer was installed in Death Valley at Furnace 
Creek, where the only flowing water in more than a 
hundred miles supports a depressing little ranch. 
There one or two white men, helped by a few In- 
dians, raise alfalfa, which they sell at exorbitant 
prices to deluded prospectors searching for riches 
which they never find. Though the terrible heat 
ruins the health of the white men in a year or two, 
so that they have to move away, they have suc- 
ceeded in keeping a thermometer record for some 
years. No other properly exposed out-of-door ther- 
mometer in the United States, or perhaps in the 
world. Is so familiar with a temperature of loo ° F. 
or more. During the period of not quite fifteen 
hundred days from the spring of 19 ii to May, 
1 91 5, a maximum temperature of 100° F. or more 
was reached in five hundred and forty-eight days, 
or more than one-third of the time. On July 10, 
1913, the mercury rose to 134° F. and touched the 
top of the tube. How much higher it might have 
gone no one can tell. That day marks the limit of 
temperature yet reached in this country according 

[228] 



Appendix 

to official records. In the summer of 19 14 there 
was one night when the thermometer dropped only 
to 114° F., having been 128° F. at noon. The 
branches of a pepper-tree whose roots had been 
freshly watered wilted as a flower wilts when broken 
from the stalk." 

— The Chronicles of America. — Volume I. 
"The Red Man's Continent," by Ells- 
worth Huntington. 



[229] 



i*87 ti4 










*3^ 





U.V ^, ^ -^ -7*^^ •» XJ.V ^ 



„<C 






\ 



*^ ■' . . s 



.V 0°/!". 'V ^0^ .. 









> <f'f^^' 














^7- 






°7l 






^i^ 



^ 







^^-^^^ 









.V 



."^- *\ 



' '^;£'m 






CL * 










^vOC.*^ 






A. -<?• Deacldified using the Bookkeei 

•• ^ ^-* Neutralizing Agent: Magnes.un 

^ -r.-rtrstrrifsnt Date; 



JV- 




■^FRVATION TECHN 






:€ 



^^ c o " « 









w 



^&^ 



'^o. 










* 



v^^ 



^^"•^ 







